Master's Challenge td-55 Read online

  Her flesh was white and cool-looking.

  "I thought you . . . well, I'm sorry. I was wondering if you were all right," he said.

  "I thought you'd never come," she said. "Come in."

  "No," Smith said. "1 just wanted to be sure that everything was okay."

  "Everything is not okay."

  "No? What's the matter?" he asked.

  "It won't be okay until you're here with me, Harry."

  He took a step inside the room. Slowly she pulled the sheet down, off her naked body, and extended her arms to him.

  He took another step. Then stopped.

  "I can't," he said. "I just can't."

  "You said you'd stay," she said in a pouting voice. She made no effort to pull the sheet back up.

  "1 will. I'll stay outside on the sofa. You'll be safe," he promised.

  "But will you?" she asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was mid-morning when the travelers from Wales landed in Sinanju.

  "Watch for snakes," Remo said.

  The boy, Griffith, holding fast to Jilda's hand, looked around at the bleak forbidding, landscape. "So this is the land of the great Chinee," he said, awestruck. "Would they be invisible, now?"

  "No, boy," Emrys said. "But watch where you're walking. Hoa, what's wrong?"

  The boy sank to his knees, wrapping his thin arms over his head. " 'Tis a-terrible strong force," the boy groaned.

  Remo felt dizzy. "I feel it, too. Music." The air was filled with dissonant sounds that were somehow strangely familiar. "There's music coming from somewhere close."

  Jilda and Emrys looked at one another. There was no music that they could hear. "Come," she said, picking up the boy in her arms. "You're both tired."

  "Can't you hear it?" Remo slapped his hands over his ears. "The loudest music I ever heard. Oh ..."

  He fell. Emrys rushed over to him. "What is it?"

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  "Can't move." He tried to sit up. Not a muscle worked. Even his fingers were immobile. And the discordant music kept roaring in his ears.

  Emrys slid his burly arms beneath Remo and lifted him. "We're near the cave," he said, making his way inland at a trot.

  Inside the cave, the music vanished. Griffith got to his feet as H'si T'ang laid hands on Remo. Within a few minutes, Remo sat up.

  "The Chinee can make magic," the boy whispered to his father.

  "Indeed," Chiun said. "But we are not Chinese. I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju, and this is H'si T'ang, past Master." He gave the boy a small bow.

  Griffith returned it as best he could. "I am Griffith, sir. I meant no disrespect."

  "Then call us by our proper names."

  "Yes, sir," Griffith said meekly.

  Remo flexed his hands. "I can't understand it," he said. "I was fine one minute, and then--"

  "There are things which must be explained," Chiun said. "But first, why are you here-all of you?" He looked sternly at the four visitors.

  "Well, it's uh-" Remo fumbled.

  "We have decided not to carry out the Master's Trial," Jilda said.

  Chiun's eyebrows rose.

  Remo stood up. "That's right. I'm sorry, Little Father, but it's not for me. I beat Ancion and Kiree by luck. I wasn't a better fighter than they were, and I felt rotten afterward. They shouldn't have had to die. I think there's room for all of us on this planet. Jilda and Emrys feel the same way."

  Chiun began to sputter, but H'si T'ang intervened. "As do 1, my son. I congratulate you all on your intelligence."

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  "But the Trial," Chiun said, incredulous at the effrontery of the three contestants. "It is one of the oldest traditions in Sinanju."

  "The preservation of our people is the oldest tradition," H'si T'ang said, "and the most worthwhile. Do you not see, Chiun? Trial. You needed Remo, and he has come."

  "Needed me? What for?"

  Chiun settled himself in a sitting position beside Remo. "Do you remember the Dutchman?"

  "Sure. He was killed off the coast of St. Martin's."

  "No. He lives. He is here." He described his confrontation with the thin man who had arrived unconscious at the cave, and of the Dutchman's exit the night before. "I could not kill him," Chiun said, his eyes lowered. "He is my punishment for the death of Nuihc. That task must rest with you."

  "Can he really make things explode just by looking at them?" Griffith asked. Emrys prodded the boy with his elbow.

  "Unfortunately, yes," H'si T'ang said. "A very dangerous man."

  Remo stood slowly, thinking. "It was him, then. The music, everything. He knows I'm here."

  "I'm afraid so," Chiun said.

  Remo sighed. "I'd better not waste any time."

  Jilda rose. "No," Remo said, cutting her off before she could speak.

  "But 1 didn't hear any music. He won't be after me."

  "He will be if you show up."

  "Oh- "

  "Don't you see? You'd hear the music if he wanted you to hear it. You'd do anything he told you. You just can't fight him, Jilda."

  "Can you?"

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  He looked outside, at the rocky hills beyond the cave. "I don't know," he said, and left.

  "I must go with him," Jilda said, rushing after Remo. Chiun stopped her. "The Dutchman is not your adversary. You would surely die in combat with him."

  "I'd have as much of a chance as Remo has!"

  "No, my child. You are a fine warrior. 1 have heard of your bravery and skill. But only Remo stands a chance against this man."

  "Why Remo?" Emrys asked defensively.

  "Because Remo is not who he believes himself to be."

  "Who is he, then?" Emrys barely concealed his disdain.

  "He is a being beyond the scope of our understanding," Chiun said. "But in order to fulfill his destiny, he must first come to realize this. I had hoped that the Master's Trial would help him to arrive at this knowledge, but it has not. Perhaps he will learn now."

  "A lot of mumbo-jumbo, if you ask me," Emrys muttered. "If this Dutchman fella's as much of a maniac as you say, Remo can use my help." He lumbered out of the cave.

  . "Emrys, don't go!" Jilda shouted. Emrys didn't turn back. She rushed to collect her things. "I'll go, too. If there are three of us . . ." Her gaze rested on Griffith.

  The boy was sitting cross-legged, staring into space. "Don't leave, Da," he said quietly. "The power 1 feel is death, and the music is the song of the beast."

  Jilda bent low over him. "Griffith? What are you saying?"

  Griffith continued to stare, unblinking.

  "The boy understands," said H'si T'ang.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "A being beyond scope," Emrys grumbled. "Doesn't know who he is. My arse."

  Remo wasn't any weirder a being than anyone else, except maybe his teachers. Masters of Sinanju or not, those Chinee were a couple of lunatics. No wonder poor Remo couldn't even eat a rabbit. Brought up by crazy men, that's what he was. And with all their magic, not a one between them to help the poor sod out in a fight.

  Well, Remo had done his share on the long journey from Wales, and even if he didn't come from the valley, he was as good a friend as Emrys had. He'd find that when he needed help, Emrys would be there to lend a hand.

  There he was, just ahead, a form turning the crest of the hill. "Ho, Remo," Emrys called, but his voice was drowned in a wave of swelling music.

  Music?

  You'd hear the music if he wanted you to hear it, Remo had said.

  The music grew louder. Emrys unsheathed his knife and whirled around. Nothing.

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  But the music . . . Suddenly his feet shifted beneath him. He lunged, but he remained rooted where he stood. His feet were covered to the ankles in soft, bubbling mud the consistency of gruel.

  "Quicksand," he whispered, unbelieving. As far as he could see, the dry, grassy soil had turned into a roiling cauldron of yellow muck. He struggl
ed, dropping his knife. It disappeared into the liquid earth.

  The figure appeared again on the hill. "Remo!" Emrys called. "By Mryddin, come get me out of this mess!"

  The quicksand disappeared. In the blink of an eye, Emrys was standing once again on firm ground. His knife lay beside him in a tuft of grass.

  "All the gods," he said. The figure was still standing on the hill, which, inexplicably, seemed to turn blue.

  He shook his head. It was a damn good thing he hadn't fought Remo in the Master's Trial, he thought. His vision wasn't just weak, it was playing tricks on him as well.

  He walked toward it. The blue of the mound changed to green, and then to violet. The hill itself appeared to change shape, into an impossibly correct geometric pyramid. The low rises around it spiked upward into perfect triangles, glowing in a spectrum of unearthly colors like some modernist stage set.

  "This can't be happening," Emrys said. It must have been the sea voyage. He'd heard about sailors who'd claimed to see strange things from being too long off land. And the food had been scant and bad, and . . .

  "Your eyes are failing," a voice said, seemingly from nowhere. He turned around, jabbing the air instinctively with his knife.

  "Can't you see me?" The voice was smooth, mocking.

  "Come out here and fight me like a man."

  "But I am here." Emrys whirled back to face the

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  mountain. Where a moment before had been only empty air now stood a tall blond man with cornflower-blue eyes.

  "How-how-"

  "It depends on what you see," the man said. "In your case, that isn't much. Why, you're nothing but a stumbling, blind thing. A wounded animal. It would be far too easy to kill you."

  "Well, now, why don't you just try it then, you motherless snake?"

  The Dutchman's eyes widened. "You would do better to be afraid."

  "The day I'm afraid of a skinny big-mouth fool like you is the day I'm buried in my grave," Emrys said.

  "As you wish."

  The Dutchman was gone. Then, instantaneously, his lone figure stood once again on the surrealistic mountain. Two birds swept near him, squawking. The Dutchman snatched out with his hands and plucked them out of the sky. Emrys stood poised for battle, beads of sweat forming on his brow.

  The Dutchman released the birds. They flew like bullets in a straight line toward Emrys. Halfway to their target, the birds changed into hurtling balls of white light. Emrys swatted at them with his knife, but their speed was faster than anything he'd even seen. The glowing spheres shot into his eyes, burning them to blackened holes. The Welshman screamed once, then fell, his hands covering his head while his body convulsed in pain.

  "Da!" Griffith shouted in the cave. He stood up, his hands slapping against his eyes. "My da! He's hurt."

  Jilda put her arms around him.

  "Let me go!" My da needs me now!" He strained toward the open mouth of the cave.

  Jilda breathed deeply. "I'm going," she said.

  Chiun nodded, rising.

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  "We shall all go," H'si T'ang said.

  They found Emrys still writhing in pain, the ground where he had fallen kicked up from the movement of his legs.

  "Da!" Griffith called, running to him.

  H'si T'ang pried open the big man's hands to touch the ugly black wounds where his eyes had been.

  Remo came over the hill. "I heard someone," he said. Then he saw Emrys. "Oh, God." The boy had his small arms wrapped around his father.

  "Can't you do something?" Remo asked H'si T'ang.

  "It is too late," the old man said. "He is dying. There is nothing to be done."

  "Jilda . . . Jilda," Emrys whispered, barely able to move his lips.

  Jilda knelt beside him. "I am here, my friend."

  The Welshman struggled to speak. "Take care of my son," he said. Sweat poured off him. "Take him back home. See that he's safe, 1 beg you." He clutched her hand.

  "I promise," Jilda said. "May the fields be sweet where you walk."

  "Griffith ..."

  "Yes, Da, yes," the boy sobbed.

  "None of your weeping. You are to take my place, so your job is to stay well and strong."

  The boy shook. "Oh, Da, I did it. Your sight's gone because of me. That day in the tree, when you fell-"

  "No!" The big man's voice rose. "My blindness was not your doing."

  "You fell when you tried to save me," the boy said miserably.

  "It wasn't that way, son. I fell, but it was not the rock I hit that ruined my sight. My eyes were going bad long before that, but I said nothing about it. I could not admit

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  my own weakness, don't you know. I let you take the blame, to save my pride."

  "No, Da-"

  "Yes." His hand groped out to grip the boy's arm. "And you carried the burden like a man. A better man than I ever was. Griffith . . ." He was heaving now with the effort of breathing.

  The boy pressed his head against his father's and whispered in his ear. "I can hear you, Da."

  "Trust your spirits. They've made you fine. Ask them to forgive me, if you can." He kissed his son.

  As gently as he could, Remo lifted up the giant and walked with him in his arms. For a moment, Emrys managed a thin smile. "You're not half bad for a Chinee," he said. His head fell back. The cave was in sight.

  "He's dead," Remo said quietly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mildred Pensoitte was asleep. Smith had peeked into her room to be sure of it, then had closed the door tightly, and now he sat at a small desk in the far corner of the living room. He kept his back toward the front windows. If Mildred should awaken and come into the room, he could see her and hang up the telephone before she noticed anything.

  He unlocked his attache case with the small brass key he kept pinned to the fabric of an inside jacket pocket. From the case, he took a small round device that looked, in shape, like a two-inch-thick slab cut from a piece of liverwurst. It was an invention of his own design. On the top of the device were keys, marked with letters and numbers, and when he telephoned into the computers at Folcroft, he could spell out questions, and they would answer back, by electronic signals, depressing the printing keys, and the answer would be recorded on micro-thin paper stored inside the unit.

  The phone was a pushbutton telephone with several lines. It didn't matter. Even if Mildred should pick up an

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  extension in her bedroom, all she would hear would be electronic tones.

  Smith dialed the local access code for the Folcroft computers. He had recently improved the design of his telephone system so now it was possible to reach his computers through a local call from anywhere in the United States. It gave him the freedom to use a borrowed telephone and make sure there would be no record on the monthly bill of what number had been called. He knew, sadly, that he would never be able to get Remo to use the system. It required remembering numbers, and Remo had no ability and even less desire to remember anything. It had taken him five years to learn the 800 area code number he now used, and Smith thought it was better to leave things alone.

  He dialed CURE'S local number. The telephone buzzed, and then there was silence as the computers activated the telephone line. They made no sound, and Smith knew he had exactly fifteen seconds to press in his personal identification code before the line went dead.

  He held the small round unit over the telephone mouthpiece and depressed the buttons M-C-3-1-9. There was an answering beep through the earpiece. The computer had received the code and was awaiting Smith's instructions.

  He tapped out on the small hand-held sender: "LATEST REPORT ON INTERCEPTED TRANSMISSIONS."

  He could feel the unit in his hand whir as different electronic circuits were being triggered, then a small sheet of heat-sensitive paper emerged from one end of the unit. When the whirring stopped, he read it.

  "LATEST TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED AT 6 P.M. READS 'THIS IS B. I
WILL KILL PRESIDENT IMMEDIATELY UPON HIS RETURN.' "

  B? Smith thought. But B was dead. Robin Feldmar, Birdie, had been dead several hours before 6 P.M.

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  He tapped into the telephone: "ASSUMED B WAS ROBIN FELDMAR. FELDMAR DIED AT 4 P.M. TODAY. CONCLUSION?"

  The machine responded instantly: "CONCLUSION, FELDMAR NOT B, B HAS PERSONAL ACCESS TO COMPUTER MESSAGE SYSTEM. B SENT MESSAGE PERSONALLY."

  Smith asked: "COULD MAIN COMPUTER SYSTEM BE LOCATED AT DU LAC COLLEGE, MINNESOTA?"

  The machine waited several minutes before responding.

  "AFFIRMATIVE. CONCLUSION CHECKED. COMPUTER IS AT DU LAC. CAN BE REACHED FROM ANYWHERE BY TELEPHONE HOOKUP."

  Smith asked: "WHO ARE RECIPIENTS OF B'S MESSAGES?"

  The computer responsed: "NOW CHECKING POTENTIAL HOOKUPS OF DU LAC COMPUTER WITH OTHER MAJOR SYSTEMS."

  Smith asked: "HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?"

  The answer: "THREE HOURS."

  "DO IT FASTER," Smith wrote.

  "THREE HOURS," the computer stubbornly replied.

  Smith thought for a moment, then tapped on the machine's keyboard: "CAN YOU PLANT MESSAGE INTO DU LAC SYSTEM BY OVERRIDE?"

  "YES."

  Smith tapped: "PLANT THIS INFORMATION. THE TRAITOR INSIDE EARTH GOODNESS SOCIETY IS HARRY SMITH. A NEW EMPLOYEE."

  "WILL DO AS SOON AS THIS CIRCUIT IS CLEARED," the computer replied.

  "OUT. M-C-3-1-9," Smith typed and even as he depressed the last digit, the telephone went dead as the computer cut the connection.

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  He threw the message paper into the wastebasket. Already its edges were turning dark, and in no more than a minute, the paper would turn totally black. A minute after that, it would disintegrate into powder.

  Smith put his telephone device back into his briefcase and carried it over to the couch. He took out his revolver, then locked the case, put it on a chair, and covered it with his suit jacket. He put the gun on the floor under the sofa, then lay down to rest.

  The die was cast. In a few hours or a few minutes, the assassin inside Earth Goodness would know Smith was an enemy and would be coming for him. And Smith would know in three hours who the assassins were working for. Who wanted the president dead.

  He felt a tingle at the base of his spine. There was danger ahead of him. He knew that, but he felt the excitement of the doer. He could take care of the danger, and he could take care of the threat to the president, and, yes, he could take care of the threat to Mildred Pensoitte.