The Final Death

Someone behind Remo giggled. Charlie Ko told him to shut up.

"So you're the head of all this?" said Remo.

"No," said Mary Beriberi Greenscab. "I'm not, Mister Wise Guy Showoff. But I soon will be. By the time this nation recovers from the meat-eaters holocaust, I will be."

"O.K., fine, I'll buy that," said Remo. "So what are you waiting for? Shoot me and take over the country."

"Oh, no," said Mary, smiling. "First you are going to tell us how much you know and then you are going to die from a swine-flu shot reaction."

"All right," said Remo, sitting down in the big metal bin as if he were warming up to a Boy Scout fire. "You can find out how much I know from what I don't know. For instance, you are the ones putting the poison in the meat."

"Yes."

"The Pennsylvania convention?"

"Yes."

"The skeletons in the trees?"

"Yes."

"Why?" asked Remo.

"I'm sorry?"

"Why so much fooling around? The convention, then the skeletons, skinning bodies. What's the matter? You get bored easy? Why not just go ahead and poison the country?"

"Tests," said Mary simply, "At first our poison didn't work fast enough. So we tried it out on that convention and studied its effects."

"While we were working on a better mixture, a couple of people were getting close, like Angus and you. So we killed them according to traditional ritual. Now the poison is fast and 100% percent effective. We're going to start killing meat eaters by the millions."

Sheng Wa laughed. Charlie Ko told him to shut up.

"Traditional ritual?" asked Remo.

"Yes, Mr. Nichols. Didn't you know? We're honorary Chinese vampires. It is our creed to do away with all who desecrate the sacred stomach."

Now everyone started to laugh. Except Remo. He remembered what Chiun had said and felt a chill. He didn't think it was very funny. His voice cut off the levity.

"I don't understand this and I don't care." He got up. "You're all about to become just so much more meat." Remo heard the tone of his voice and was surprised that he sounded angry. Screw it. Screw his anger, and screw Chiun's fears, and screw Smith's detective work.

Remo was preparing his ankles and toes to send him up 12 feet into the air when the floor dropped out. He had been so angry that he didn't fully register Charlie's movement. Ko had pressed the pointed tube against the metal of the bin which had sent an electronic impulse to an automatic switch which opened the trapdoor floor.

Remo's toes curled, his legs twanged, but there was no longer anything to react against. He dropped like a stone.

Remo turned his muscles limp so no bones would be broken if he hit anything. He felt a gently sloping wall press into his side and he realized that he was now sliding along a chute.

A split second before he went through it, he saw a rectangular hole appear before him. Suddenly he was lying on the floor of a massive freezer.

A thick sheet of concrete reinforced steel slid down over the entrance. Just before it locked Remo thought he heard hysterical laughter from above.

Remo looked around, bringing his body temperature down closer to that of the air around him. He estimated it at five degrees below zero. The walls were white-and-gray frozen slabs stretching down for 50 feet. The room was 20 feet wide, big enough to hold several dozen men working on the large carcasses of meat that were even now hung on hooks that lined the ceiling along the center of the freezer.

Remo walked down the line of dead cows to find the door. Then he heard a hissing sound. He looked down the row of carcasses to see a white cloud billowing out of a freezer unit, filling the other end of the room.

A smoke? A mist? Chiun's fears? It couldn't be. No, it couldn't be. But still, Remo began to move back, away from the gathering fog.

Remo started peering between sides of beef as he went, wondering why you could never find a cross when you needed one. And how to ward off a Chinese vampire? A cross made of chopsticks? A ring of wonton around your neck? Sprinkle soy sauce on their graves? Impale them on a fortune cookie?

Remo suddenly realized that the hunk of meat on his right looked different out the corner of his eye. It was a different color. It was a different shape. It was smaller.

And it had legs.

Remo turned. Viki Angus was on a meat hook. Her brown eyes were open and icicles had formed on her lower eyelids where her tears had frozen. Her mouth was open and her tongue had become a solid block of ice. Her head did not loll back because her neck was stiff and cold.

The hook protruded out the middle of her chest, just to the left of her silver Star Trek insignia. It was big and sharp and rounded and its slick black color clashed with the blue of her uniform. The other hooks were metal gray but this one was black because a thin layer of her blood had frozen on it before it had a chance to drip off.

Her body did not sway, her legs did not dangle. Her boots were on but her pantyhose was missing. They must have had fun with her before she died.

Remo stood before her silent corpse. He reached up to take her down and her frozen arm broke off in his hand.

Then the mist was upon him.

Mary Beriberi Greenscab was sitting with her feet up in the control room.

"It's too bad they don't have a camera in the freezer," said Charlie Ko, wistfully, playing with his fingernail. He was slicing pieces of paper in half that he threw into the air.

"The lens would freeze up, maybe break," said Mary, pulling her jeans-enclosed legs off the counter. She stood up and straightened her green checked shirt.

"So what's the gab, Greenscab?" said Sheng Wa.

"Yeah, what's hairy, Beriberi?" said Eddie Cantlie.

Everybody laughed until Mary flared, "Don't call me that. I don't need that cover anymore. My name is Broffman. Ms. Mary Broffman. But soon you can call me Ms. President." Mary smiled, sticking her thumbs under her lapels, and everyone in the control room hooted.

"Alright," she said. "This is it. Yat-Sen and Gluck should be back any minute. You guys go get Nichols and Angus. Thaw them both out. Drop Nichols anywhere and stick the girl with the old chink in a tree." Mary moved toward the exit door.

"Hey," said Charlie Ko. "What are you going to do?"

Mary turned back. "I? I? I am going to report "mission accomplished" to the leader. Then I'm going to the airport."

Charlie's eyes widened. "You're going to drop the stuff?"

Mary smiled. "By tonight, the meat eaters will be dropping like flies. By next week, we'll have this government on its knees."

Mary left. The boys howled and hooted.

"All right," said Charlie, taking over. "Let's get this place cleaned up. I'll call Texas Solly and tell him he can open up again tomorrow. If he's still around tomorrow."

The group moved down into the slaughterhouse disassembly line. They moved across a metal balcony which led onto a spiral staircase that moved down into the huge room proper. The chutes, machinery, and monorail-like harness for the steers were clean and unmoving. The chutes and trap doors where the dead cows appeared lined one wall. A battery of opaque windows lined another. Benches and work tables were underneath the second-story balcony and the huge door to the freezer occupied the fourth and facing wall.

Sheng Wa and Steinberg moved in front of the cold-storage entrance as Eddie Cantlie came down the stairs. Charlie Ko moved across the edge of the railed balcony overlooking the entire floor.

Steinberg turned back from the door and looked up at Charlie.

"How do you open this damn thing anyway?"

They didn't have to.

There was a cracking whump and suddenly the entire freezer door broke off from the wall and went flying across the room. Sheng Wa and Steinberg were in its path so they were smacked forward to smash against the wall and drop onto the work tables like rag dolls before the still-flying door crushed them into powder.

Charlie Ko saw the huge door disappear under him before he heard the sickening crash. Then he looked back to the now-open entrance as a huge cloud of cold air and white mist billowed into the room.

The puffy billows built up like smoke bombs at a rock-and-roll show or a nuclear explosion climbing the sky until a figure came leaping out from the very heart of the cloud. A dark-haired, thin man with thick wrists came bounding up into the room.

Remo Williams, the Destroyer, soul intact, dropped lightly to the floor as the smoke swirled around him.

Charlie dropped to his knees, his mouth open, his knuckles white gripping the protective railing, and Eddie Cantlie had fallen back on the stairs, staring at him between two rungs of the bannister.

And Remo intoned, "I am created Shiva the Destroyer, the dead night tiger made whole by Sinanju. What is this dog meat that now stands before me?"

Eddie Cantlie felt his pants go wet and he tried to scramble back up the stairs. Remo walked over and punched the bottom stair. The entire revolving stairwell began to vibrate. Remo punched it again. The stairs began to shake until the internal strength of the steel could no longer stand the unnatural vibration and began to break up.

Remo took a step back and lightly tapped the bottom stair with his heel, as if by an afterthought. The top stair disconnected from the balcony. The bottom stair ripped up from the floor and the entire structure toppled with Eddie Cantlie in the middle.

Eddie seemed to hover momentarily in the air as the heavy stairwell crashed to the floor. He collided with the bannister, then the structure bounced. Eddie hit the center beam, then bounced himself to fall face first on the concrete floor. He never felt the floor.

Remo turned to Charlie. Charlie turned to run and then screamed. Before him stood Chiun. In each hand Chiun held large liquid-looking bean bags. Except these bean bags had faces. They were stretched and lumpy faces, as if every bone in them had been squashed into sand, but still, they were faces. They were Yat-Sen and Gluck's faces. Charlie Ko fell to his knees.

Chiun looked down at Charlie and then to the two hulks he held in his hands. He screwed his face in disgust.

"Amateur help," he said. Then he threw his two human bean bags over the railing onto the floor before Remo. They hit the ground without bouncing. They just wiggled like so much jello.

"Don't kill that one," Remo called up. "I need to talk to him."

"The others are not dead," said Chiun. "I brought them here to be killed by you. It is written that Shiva shall put down the second coming of the undead and my ancestor's disgrace."

Remo looked at the two blobs of barely existing matter that lay before him. He could not imagine how Chiun had managed to walk through downtown Houston with one on the end of each hand.

"Where does it say that Shiva will put down the undead?" he asked.

"It is written," said Chiun. "But do not worry. They are not truly of the undead."

"How do you know?"

"How do you know?"

"They entered my room unbidden. I was deep in the throes of the Final Death when they came in without permission. It was then that I realized that they could not be truly of the Creed."

Remo remembered when the mist came over him in the freezer. Chiun must have done what he had done when he realized that he had been tricked. Remo remembered how his stomach knotted and numbness had crept throughout his body.

It was the same sensation he had the last two times he had been poisoned. So he did what he did then. He upped the oxygen content in his blood to assimilate the poison. Then he concentrated his entire essense on his stomach. The center of all life and death. Then when all the oxygen and blood and poison rushed into his stomach, he threw it up and out.

In the freezer now was a little pile of frozen green, red and black. Just below Viki Angus' broken body.

Remo kneeled down on one knee between the quivering piles" of Yat-Sen and Gluck.

"I'd like to make this painful, guys, but I don't have the time."

He drove the first knuckle of each hand into their respective heads. What was left of their respective heads. He felt his digits sink deep into their whole and intact brains. Then he threw their carcasses into the freezer to join the puke.

Remo looked up to where Chiun stood before a quaking Charlie Ko. Remo's eyes met the old man's and there flashed an emotion between them. It was the love of father for son, and son for father.

Charlie Ko made his move. His legs straightened and he whipped his long-nailed right forefinger out in front of his hurtling body directly in line with the soft, thin, unprotected layer of flesh below Chiun's jaw. He felt the solid rush of adrenalin that came from knowing that he could take the old man's head clean off.

If it was still there to take. Suddenly the yellow body before him was gone and Charlie felt himself flying through empty air. Then there was a yellow flash from below, a tug at his wrist, and Charlie Ko stopped in midair on his feet.

His hand didn't. His hand, still with his forefinger out, still with his other four fingers clenched, spun across the metal balcony, teetered on the edge, and dropped over.

Blood began to spurt out of his right arm trunk as Remo leaped up onto the balcony and gripped the back of Charlie's neck and his right forearm in such a way that the bleeding stopped but the blinding pain didn't.

"Okay, fella," Remo said. "You want to talk now or wait till after lunch?"

Charlie poured out his soul, knowing that this was the end and that, somehow, his talking would make the incredible pain end more quickly.

"We were hired by this old man to kill every non-vegetarian in the country."

"How?"

"We used this two-part poison the old man gave us. One part went into the meat, one part went into the gas."

"Why?"

"Because the authorities would have been able to locate the poison easily and develop an antidote if any one part were toxic. The part in the meat is kind of weak. But the gas activates it, makes it deadly."

"How did you get it in the meat?"

"Eddie… he was the one on the stairs. He was the government inspector at this plant. We put it in the USDA ink."

Smith had been right. Remo returned his attentions to Charlie.

"Where's Mary?"

"She went to report to the leader."

Chiun looked at Remo.

"Where's he?"

"At the Sheraton. Room 1824."

"Good year. Anything else?"

"Yeah, yeah. Mary is going to the airport and spread the gas over the city."

Remo dropped Charlie in disgust. The pain behind his neck stopped, but the blood started coursing out of his stump again.

"Come on, Little Father, let's go," said Remo.

"No, my son, you must kill the man yourself."

Remo turned back. "Why?"

"It is written that you will deliver the blow that avenges my father's disgrace."

"Where does it say that?"

"Just do it," spat Chiun. "Must you always bicker?"

Remo moved toward Chiun and Charlie's contorting body. "How many times do I have to go through this thing?" he complained. "Every time we get a new assignment, it's written here that I'll do this, it's written there that I'll do that. Can't we just go?"

"It is written," said Chiun. "That the son of the son of the father must do the deed."

"I never read that," said Remo. "Was that part of the fine print?"

Charlie Ko looked up at the two and screeched, "Please."

"All right," said Remo. "If you put it that way." He moved in and with one stroke ended Charlie's torture permanently.

Chiun beamed. "My son, I am proud of you."

"Proud?" said Remo. "You're proud of me? Proud? Of me, the white man, the pale piece of pig's ear?"

"Well, perhaps proud is a little excessive," Chiun said. "Highly tolerant is more correct. After all, it has been many days and still my manuscript is not delivered onto television. Important things like that are not easily forgotten."

Remo sighed.

"And another thing. Your wrist was bent when you disposed of that garbage."

"Oh God, here we go again. He's dead, isn't he?"

"Dead is dead and wrong is wrong," said Chiun. "Why was your wrist bent?"

"I'll explain it all to you on the way to the airport," Remo said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a beautiful day for flying. The sky was clear, the visibility was 50 miles and the sun was slowly sinking in the west.

The golden strands of sunset were just beginning to reach across the horizon when Ms. Mary Broffman radioed the control tower and asked permission for take-off.

She had told the leader of their success with the two agents of Sinanju, then prepared herself for the flight of the Final Death.

She had refilled the gasoline tank on her orange-and-white two-seater, specially fitted, Piper Cub airplane, nicknamed "hojo" because when it was flying it resembled a Howard Johnson's restaurant with its orange roof. Then she had checked all her gauges and shifts, then the engine and flaps, then the little motor-cycle motor attached to the dull-green cannister in back.

All was in readiness. By nightfall most of the meat eaters in Texas would keel over. And by the morning the country would be in panic. Bodies would be littering the streets. The government would probably be gutted piecemeal. Large corporations would be leaderless and hollow. All manufacturing would grind to a halt. The entire foundation of the country would crumble.

Those left would be helpless wanderers. For a precious few days, before the entire hemisphere was quarantined and the gas wore off, before the first of the doubtless many foreign attacks that would be launched to lay siege on the fat, dead nation, there would be time. Time to accumulate riches beyond belief. Wealth beyond measure.

And then to pilot another plane to another land, where the secret of the two-part poison would lead to incredible power and position.

The leader was a fool to entrust this vegetarian wonder to his "followers." By morning he too would be dead. Mary would see to it. And then there would be no one between her, and whatever she wanted. Not bad for a little girl from Staten Island. If someone had told her five years ago that she would have reached this position simply from interviewing a Chinese gentleman in a library for her China history course, she would not have believed it.

But here she was. Minutes away from total, absolute freedom. "Piper Cub Z-112, you are cleared for take-off on runway three. Have a good flight. Over."

"Thank you, control. Am starting engines to take off on runway three. Over."

Mary started her engines. The extra-horsepower Volkswagen engine in front of her sputtered, caught, and roared to life. She felt the vibration in the joy stick between her legs and enjoyed the rush it always gave. Grass bent in the whirling propeller's wake. Dust was kicked up and swirled behind her.

An old, blind, Chinaman in a library. A rich Jewish girl who needed a quick interview to finish a report for a school she was to drop out of two months later. An alliance formed between a desperate man and a bored girl. An incredible adventure shared in life and death. And it all came to this. The total, mind-blowing power of having the fate of the entire nation behind you attached to a motorcycle motor.

The orange-and-white airplane began to move. Mary pushed the throttle forward and began to bump down the asphalt to runway three for her first sweep.

Dusk was descending so she switched on her red-and-white flashers to warn any approaching aircraft of her presence. The runway lights glowed in the distance and the airport floodlights suddenly switched on.

Mary turned the plane around to face down runway three for her first sweep to gain momentum and power for lift off. And in the glare of the airport lights, down on runway eight, a man hopped over the fence.

Mary began to inch forward. She looked toward the small human shape in the distance moving across the field in her general direction. The plane picked up momentum as she picked up her radio microphone.

"Control, control, this is Cub Z-112. There's a man on the field. I repeat, there is a man on the field. Over."

There were a few crackling moments of radio silence, then the tiny speaker over her head replied.

"Z-112, this is control. Where? I repeat where is the man? Over."

Mary's plane was rolling down the runway at a steady clip now. She turned to look down the field and saw what was definitely a man moving in a straight line across runway seven.

"Control, this is Z-112. The man is crossing runway seven. I repeat, runway seven. Do you read? Over."

Another few seconds passed, as if the control-tower man had stopped to carefully survey the field. Mary stole another look to see the man moving onto runway six. She could now see that his right arm was up in the air.

"Z-112, this is control. I see no man on runway seven. I repeat, no man on runway seven. Over."

Mary had reached the end of her first run and was sweeping around for her final taxiing for take-off.

"Control, this is Z-112," said Mary, her voice strangely tight. "He's there, control. I see him. He has just crossed runway six. I repeat, just crossed runway six. Over."

Mary stared out her window to her left now as she saw the man moving in a diagonal as if to cut her off. She could see that he was carrying something in his raised right hand. And that something was dripping.

"Z-112, this is control. I still cannot see a man on the field. Have you been drinking? I repeat, have you been drinking? Over."

"Idiot," spat Mary. "I have not been drinking and he's there, damn it. I can see him as clear as day. Are you blind or something? Look, look, he's crossing runway five."

Mary turned and saw the man coming toward runway three. His head was turned in her direction and she saw his dark hair and high cheek bones. She saw that he was wearing a black T-shirt, blue slacks, and that he was barefoot.

In his hand was a bloody meat hook.

"Z-112, this is control. I have checked with several members of the ground crew as well as double checking myself, and we can still see no man on the runway. You had better taxi back for inspection. I repeat, taxi back for inspection."

"Like hell," Mary screamed. "The lousy fucker's on the field and he's coming after me."

Mary revved up her engine full and thrust her throttle down. The plane leaped down the runway. She watched the speedometer climb and grinned, picturing the dark-haired man trying to catch up with her but left standing in all the flying dirt, pebbles, exhaust, and garbage her engine threw behind the plane.

She took a quick glance out of her window and felt a hammer blow in her stomach. He was still gaining on her. She watched in horrified amazement as he loped across runway four, the meat hook held up like the Olympic torch at the summer Montreal games.

He seemed to be moving very slowly but his form just kept getting bigger and clearer.

Mary quickly looked at the speedometer. She was just a few kilometers below take-off velocity. Just a few more seconds and she'd beat him. If she could just keep moving for a few more seconds…

Suddenly Mary laughed wildly. What was she getting hysterical about? Let him catch up with the plane. What was he going to do? Kick her? Trip her with the hook? At this velocity, even if he somehow managed to throw the metal into her propeller, it would probably just bounce off and do very little damage.

So let him catch up. Let him run into the plane. Let him get mashed against the side. Let him get sliced into cold cuts. Come on, Mr. Wise Guy Superman. Come and get it.

Mary had reached take-off velocity. She felt her stomach settle as the wheels of the plane left the ground. She saw the airfield drop away from her windshield.

She laughed again and looked back in triumph. The man had stopped growing larger. Mary smirked. But now the hook was getting larger. Mary suddenly lost her sense of humor.

She ignored the swirling sunset out the front as she watched, in dread fascination. The hook seemed to float alongside the plane in slow motion. It turned slowly in the air, getting bigger and bigger. Then it was lifesize right in front of her face.

Then her view shattere'd. There was a cracking scream and then a violent pressure, as if someone had dropped a barbell on her chest. She watched as every loose object in her plane broke loose in the rush of wind. She watched her flight plan fly up, her silver chromatic two-color pen, her sunglasses and her leather attache case. She saw her auburn hair streak across her vision and she slowly wondered why her seat belt had not snapped so she would be sucked out too.

She held on tightly to the throttle and looked down. Coming out of her stomach was the tail end of a meat hook.

The point and catch of the metal had rammed through her body and locked out the back of her pilot's seat.

Mary threw her head back and howled like a drowning wolf. She opened her eyes and saw the horizon stretched out in front of her in a slash. From the top left of her broken windshield to the bottom right. Like the edge of a guillotine blade. Like the edge of the leader's fingernail.

Then the ground filled her vision and then nothing. She did not even have the time to feel pain. She did not even see the engine explode into the cockpit with the raging force of a full tank of gas. She did not even know that when the airport emergency crew put out the fire at the end of runway three and found what was left of her body that the meat hook looked like just another piece of melted metal.

She never knew that when the dull, green cannister melted, the fire evaporated the white mist immediately. She never knew that the control-tower man reported to the board of inquiry that she had shown signs of drunkeness and hysteria just before take-off.

And she never knew that the man who had come across five runways to get to her, the man who could move his body in such a way that light did not reflect off it toward the control tower, the man who could move so that he would never be where any member of the ground crew was looking, the man who had hurled the cold, bloody meat hook into her cockpit, had stood by the burning, wrecked carcass of her plane just after it had crashed, spread his arms and said, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"It's done, oh leader," said a voice in room 1824, the Houston Sheraton. "The meat eaters have gone to their Final Deaths."

The leader gripped the heads of the green-fanged dragon arm rests in supplication. He had waited, for what seemed like eons, for those very words to be spoken. He would not worry if they were not spoken by his female translator's voice as he had expected. For they were spoken in Chinese. And they were spoken.

The male voice had said that the stomach desecrators had gone on to their Final Deaths. Which meant that now he could go on to his last reward. He could enter the afterlife and join his ancestors, his loved ones, and companions. His gamble had paid off. The doubt of entrusting his creed's age-old secrets to paid mercenaries was over. They had done their jobs. The objective of their creed had been achieved. The leader sighed.

"It is good," he said.

"No," said a high-pitched Oriental voice in another tongue. "It is not good. It is evil."

The leader knew the language. It was Korean.

Remo and Chiun stood before the blood-red chair and its wizened occupant in the darkened hotel suite. One overhead 40 watt bulb shone down between the three, bathing their faces in dim, yellow light.

The leader tensed and sucked in his breath.

"Sinanju," he exhaled.

"Yes," said Chiun. "And your turn has come."

The leader's white brows came together in a "V," the lines in his face deepened, then, he relaxed and smiled.

"It shall be as it is," he said, waving a hand. "But surely you must understand. You, who live by a belief as old as mine. You must know the honor and dedication that drove me on."

Chiun shook his head gravely. "Sinanju is not a belief," he intoned. "It is a way of life. A way of life we do not force onto others. Few are blessed with the honor that is Sinanju." The Master looked at Remo. "We would not have it any other way."

"So it is not done," said the leader with sudden apprehension.

"No, it is not," said Chiun, "The only ones cursed with the Final Death are your amateur help,"

The Korean leaned in to hiss into the leader's ear.

"You could have finished us as easily as drowning a child. Yea, as old and blind as you are. You had only to face us yourself and your creed could have ruled the earth again."

The Master rose to his full height.

"But you diluted your wisdom with the stupidity of others until you were no more dangerous than a dying wind. So now you must pay."

"Yes," said the leader, anxious to join his creed in the afterlife. "I am ready. Do it now. Kill me."

Chiun stepped back. "Yes, you will die," he said. "But we will not kill you. For you are of the undead, and it is written that only in death are you truly alive. So it follows that only in life are you truly dead."

The leader sat still, drinking in Chiun's words. Then, before the full meaning of those words dawned on him, before he could drive his own fingernail into his neck to escape, Remo moved.

His right hand chopped just under the leader's ear, stopping all movement, paralysing all limbs as the left hand sped forward, faster than the eye could follow, faster than skin could react, faster than bone could break, to snake into the leader's skull, to shave a part of the leader's brain, then withdraw, without stopping movement to join the right hand again at Remo's side.

The leader still sat. No cut appeared on his skin. No break could be discerned upon his skull. His eyes were closed, but the heart still beat, the blood still flowed, the mind still worked.

But the electrical impulses that guided the muscles went no further than the top of his spine. The leader's mind no longer had any direct control of his body. The brain still functioned but his limbs would not respond to his orders. He was trapped.

"See?" said Remo to Chiun. "I didn't bend my elbow that time."

The Houston doctors marvelled at the patient. The old Chinese was almost an exact replica of the case of the Massachusetts girl who had been in a coma since birth.

He, like she, was still alive, but he, like she was unaware of that fact. An incredible case. The Houston doctors were pleased and honored to get it.

They had warned the man who committed him that there was very little chance of his ever recovering.

"That's all right," said the man. "Just keep my grandfather alive as long as possible."

They had warned the man that with the new life-sustaining techniques, it was quite conceivable that the old Oriental could outlive them all.

"That's fine," said the man. "I'd like to think of him as a memorial to the family."

They had warned the man that this sort of prolonged treatment would be very expensive.

"That's fine too," said the man, plopping down five piles of hundred dollar bills. "Money is no object."

The doctors had no more warnings. After they checked the authenticity of the bills, they hoped that Mr. Nichols' grandfather would live a long and full life in the intensive-care unit and that Mr. Nichols and his father would visit any time they pleased.

"Well, actually," said Remo, "we're going out of town for a long time. Just, please, keep granddaddy alive."

The doctors sympathized and wished Mr. Nichols and his father well, even though they could not figure out how, medically speaking, a tall, white, dark-haired American was born to such a short, white-haired, yellow-skinned man.

Remo and Chiun left the Houston Hospital to go back to their hotel.

"I'm glad you did not pay gold," Chiun said. "Chinamen aren't worth it."

"Paper will do," said Remo. "Besides I'm going to have a wonderful time explaining to Smitty why we needed the money in the first place."

"Tell him we will return it. It will gladden the emperor's heart," Chiun said.

"And just how do you propose we do that?" Remo asked. "That was $25,000. A lot of scratch."

"It is as nothing compared to all that you will earn next week when you deliver my daytime drama to the television people. It will make me wealthy. And your three percent share as my agent will enable you to repay Smith."

"My what?"

"Your four percent share," said Chiun.

"My what?"

"Your five percent share," said Chiun, coldly, then turned away and told the wall: "All agents are bandits."