Child's Play td-23 Read online

  "Wait," said Remo. "Not out here in the hall." He led Dr. Charlese to his suite. He opened the door quietly and put a finger over his lips. A frail Oriental, with a wisp of a white beard and strands of white hair surrounding his otherwise bald head, sat in a chartreuse kimono, mumbling something. He was watching a television program in which the actors spoke in English. Remo guided Dr. Charlese to another room.

  "I didn't know there were American soap operas down here," said Dr. Charlese.

  "There aren't. He has them taped specially. Never misses one."

  "What was he talking about?"

  "It was Korean. He was saying how awful the shows were."

  "Then why does he watch them?"

  "One never asks why with the Master of Sinanju."

  "Who?"

  "Never mind. Tell me about breathing."

  Dr. Charlese explained: The human brain emitted waves at different levels of consciousness. At the Alpha level, or what they called Alpha waves, people were more relaxed and creative and even exhibited powers of extrasensory perception. At the deeper level, where people emitted what were called Theta waves, people could perform extraordinary feats. This was documented. How many times, for example, had Remo heard of a child trapped underneath a car and the mother lifting that car in a sense of calm purpose? How many times had Remo heard of people fleeing danger and leaping over fences to do so, leaps that would have been Olympic records? How many times had Remo heard of a person surviving a fall, while others in the fall were killed? What were those greater powers?

  "Get back to the breathing," said Remo. "What does breathing have to do with these things?"

  "That's how we discovered that human beings can produce these waves at will. It's a relaxed breathing process in which you slow down your breathing. You relax your way to power."

  "And you can do these things?"

  "Well, not exactly me. But I've seen others. You see, I'm not exactly a representative of the institute, anymore. They're very finicky."

  "About what?"

  "Commissions and things, and using this power for good, I say power is power and has no purpose other than itself."

  "You stole money or something?"

  "There was an accident. They blamed me for the girl's death, but I say what is the life of a child when I can help all mankind. I, Dr. Averill Charlese. And, with you, we could make a fortune."

  "Breathing, you say, huh?"

  "Breathing."

  And Remo listened. About the institute. About the narrow-minded people running it and how Dr. Charlese was not actually a doctor exactly. He was a doctor in the broader sense. One person bestowed the title on another, therefore he was bestowing it on someone he knew was worthy of the title. Himself.

  "You could call yourself doctor, too," said Charlese.

  "Breathing you say," said Remo.

  In the late afternoon, Remo heard the set in the lounge of the suite click off. He nodded for Dr. Charlese to follow.

  When they entered the lounge, the old Oriental turned his head.

  "Little Father," Remo said, "I would like to introduce you to someone very interesting. He is not privy to any secrets of Sinanju. Neither has he been taught by any master. He learned what he knows in an American City called Houston, Texas, from white men."

  Chiun's placid eyes moved up and down the lacquer-haired visitor with the bubbling Rotarian smile. He turned away as if someone had pointed out an orange rind. He was not interested.

  "Dr. Charlese, I would like you to meet Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju."

  "Pleased to meet you, sir," said Dr. Charlese. He offered a pudgy hand. Chiun did not turn around. Dr. Charlese looked to Remo, confused.

  "He says hello a little differently," said Remo, by way of explanation. Chiun's way of saying hello was to not even turn his head as Remo explained some of the things Dr. Charlese had been talking about.

  "Breathing," Remo said. "Nothing mysterious. Nothing great. Just good old American science. By white men."

  Chiun chuckled. "Am I now led to believe the awesome magnificence of the Glorious House of Sinanju has been put into a little pill for people? That centuries of discipline and wisdom can be discovered in a test tube?"

  "No test tube," said Remo. "Breathing."

  "When we talk of breathing, we talk of approaching the unity which makes you a force," Chiun said. "When that man talks of breathing, he means puffing."

  "I don't think so, Little Father. I think they may have stumbled onto something. Maybe by accident."

  "So glad to meet you, sir. The name's Charlese. Dr. Averill Charlese, no relation to Averill Harriman, the millionaire. And you, sir, are Mr. Chiun?"

  Chiun looked off into the blue Mexican sky outside their window.

  "He doesn't like to discuss these things with strangers, especially foreigners."

  "I'm not foreign. I'm American," said Dr. Charlese. "And so are you."

  Remo heard Chiun mumble something in Korean about being able to take whiteness out of the mind but not the soul.

  "Go ahead, talk. He's really listening," Remo said. Dr. Charlese began drawing diagrams of the mind on small white cloths he found under an unused ashtray.

  Breathing, thought Remo. It had been more than a decade now since he heard that first strange instruction. More than a decade since he had stopped using his body and mind only partially, as other men did.

  What appeared to others as great feats of strength and speed were really as effortless to him now as flicking a light switch. As Chiun had said, effort was expended when one functioned improperly. Correctness brought ease.

  Remo had been taught that ease when he had been given Sinanju, called Sinanju after the village on the West Korea Bay whence came the Masters of Sinanju. From king to king and emperor to emperor, from pharaoh to Medici, these masters-one or, at most, two-generation-rented their talents and services to the rulers of the world. Assassins whose services paid for the food in the desolate little Korean village where crops did not grow and the fishing was poor. Each Master did not rule the village, but served it, for he was the provider of food.

  During many generations their actions were observed by those who would imitate Sinanju. But they only saw, as Chiun had said, the kimono and not the man. They saw the blows when the blows were slow enough for the human eye to see. And from these blows and kicks and the other movements that were slow enough for normal men to see, came karate and ninja and taikwando and all that was thought to be the martial arts.

  But they were only the rays. Sinanju was the sun source.

  And in the travels of the Masters of Sinanju, the current one, Chiun, made contact with an American group that said, "Take this man and teach him things." It had been more than ten years. And it had started with the blows and became the essence-the breathing that now so excited Remo who, since he was born in the west, had always sought to explain Sinanju to himself in Western terms. And always failed.

  Maybe Chiun was right: Sinanju could not be explained in terms of the West. Then again, maybe he was wrong.

  Remo listened to Dr. Charlese, and although Chiun seemed to be contemplating, Remo knew the Master of Sinanju was taking in every word.

  "So you see," said Dr. Charlese in summation. "People are not using their full abilities. More than 90 percent of the human brain is never used. What we do is unlock the human growth potential."

  Chiun finally turned and looked at Charlese, whose pudgy pale face was beaded with sweat, even in the air-conditioned chill of the fourteenth-floor Conquistador suite.

  "You would see something then?" asked Chiun.

  "You betcha," said Dr. Charlese.

  Chiun's long fingernails at the end of parched bony hands made a circular signal, calling on Remo for a move.

  "That's nothing," Remo said.

  "You were the one, Remo, who would invite some passing stranger into the bosom of our home. Then you may demonstrate. And of course I selected a 'nothing.' I did not want you to do it incorrectly."


  Remo shrugged. It was a simple exercise. It depended on slowness. You approached the wall with momentum, and then bringing it flat to you so you could practically smell the dust in the ceiling corner, you walked straight up, letting the momentum carry your waist height to the level of your head and then, with your feet just beneath the ceiling, dropping the head down straight to the floor and bringing the feet beneath you just before the head touched. Like so much in the discipline of Sinanju, it appeared to be what it wasn't. The legs only followed the momentum of the body up to the ceiling, though it looked as if you were using them to walk up a wall; it was really only using forward momentum deflected upward by the impact with the wall.

  "Golly, wow," said Dr. Charlese. "Wow. Walked right up the frigging wall."

  "Well, not exactly," said Remo.

  "And you too would do these things?" asked Chiun.

  "I'd be rich," said Dr. Charlese. "I could buy off the parents."

  "What parents?" Remo asked.

  "Well, that damned little girl. I had a demonstration of teaching her to swim through imagination. Little bitch."

  "What happened?" said Remo.

  "Panicked. Didn't trust me. I told her if she panicked, she'd drown, but if she relaxed, she'd be fine. Had the parents' signature on the release form too. But you know the courts in America. Didn't let it hold up. It would have been a breakthrough. Could have sold the program by mail order if it had worked."

  "You took the life of a child?" said Chiun.

  "She took her own life. If she had listened to me, she would have swum right out. I would have been famous. But the little bitch called out for her mommy. Damn. Had the local press there too."

  "I see," said Chiun. "If the child had followed your instructions, she would have lived."

  "Absolutely. One hundred percent. Lord's honest truth," said Charlese.

  "Then I will show you how to walk walls," said Chiun, "for no secrets should be kept from one of such great faith."

  This surprised Remo, because he knew that for the most deadly killers the world had ever known, the purposeful killing of a child was anathema. And there could be no question that Charlese's accident was not purposeful killing. Not to a master of Sinanju, Remo knew, because while discipline for adults was screw-lock tight, children were considered incapable of anything but receiving love. You nourished a child with love for the long hard journey through a life that had so little love.

  This teaching, Chiun said, would occur at night. Remo listened to him talk. Some of what he said to Dr. Charlese was Sinanju, but most was, as Chiun often said, chicken droppings.

  Early evening there was a phone call. Remo's Aunt Mildred was going to the country. She would be there at 3 a.m., and Remo should not worry about her kidney stones. It was a telegram read by Western Union. Remo did not worry about his Aunt Mildred or her kidney stones. He had no Aunt Mildred. He had no living relatives, which was precisely why he had been chosen more than a decade before by the people who hired Chiun to train him.

  At 1 a.m., with Dr. Charlese bubbling over with speculation on the potential of the human mind, Chiun, Remo and Charlese walked fifteen flights up a back stairway to the roof. Below them Mexico City, once a city built on a swamp and now a modern city built on the rubble of ancient cities, twinkled brightly. The air was dusty hot, even at night, and the roof above the playroof gave no relief. The air covered them like a pressure cooker lid. Charlese's fancy clothes were darkened with perspiration. The front of his shirt looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of water at his navel.

  "Do you believe?" asked Chiun.

  "I believe," said Dr. Charlese.

  "Do your breathing thing and then I shall show you a miracle," said Chiun.

  Charlese closed his eyes and breathed deeply three times.

  "I'm ready," he said.

  "Your body is air," Chiun said softly in a dull monotone. "You float like a balloon. You are on a path. Solid. Walk. You feel a little wall in the middle of the path."

  Charlese touched the small rail separating him from the sidewalks of Mexico City, one foot forward, thirty stories down.

  "Climb over the small wall and rest your feet on the step beneath it. They are wide steps but you will use only a small part of them. You are secure. You are on wide steps. You are safe," said Chiun.

  Charlese lowered his feet over the wall while the trunk of his body rested on the ledge.

  "Yep, I feel the steps," said Charlese. "Hot dayum. It's working!"

  Remo knew that what Charlese felt were the crevices between bricks. People could use the tips of the bricks for short climbing, but most people lacked the balance for anything more than a momentary step.

  "You walk safely down the steps, the broad steps," said Chiun. Charlese's body went down, a brick's height at a time. Remo joined Chiun at the edge of the roof. Charlese went down the side of the building slowly, supported by his heels which lodged in the thin mortar cracks between bricks. The top of his body was visible. Then his shoulders. Then only his head.

  "You can turn around on this wide step," said Chiun, and Charlese slowly turned his body so he was facing the wall. His smile looked to Remo like a crease in a fat melon. His eyes were closed.

  "Open your eyes," said Chiun.

  "It's working. It's working. I'll be rich," said Charlese, looking up at Remo and Chiun.

  "Now," said Chiun, holding forth a finger, "I give you a most important piece of advice. Like you gave the child in the pool."

  "I know, I know," said Charlese. "I won't muck it up."

  "The advice is this: Do not think of what your body will look like when it falls that great distance to the ground," said Chiun.

  The face went. Thwit. First it was smiling at them, and then it was gone. The hands, clutching desperately for a hold on something, anything, followed like two half-ounce bobbers yanked by a whale on the dive. Gone.

  "I told him not to think what his body would look like when it reached the ground. I hope he listened to me," said Chiun.

  Down below, a long way away, there was a distant clap, like a blob of fresh pizza dough smacking a cold tile. It was Charlese.

  "I think the kitchen is closed by now. I'd like some fish, if you can get it without butter on it," Remo said.

  "It is always a risk when someone else prepares your food," said Chiun. "You put their hands in your stomach. That is the risk."

  "Smitty sent word earlier. There's some trouble. He'll be here in a couple of hours."

  Remo opened the roof door for the Master of Sinanju. They descended the fifteen flights to their suite.

  "Trouble? Emperor Smith faces trouble? Good. An emperor is always more reasonable when he is in trouble. The calm waters are starvation time for an assassin. For then he is cheated and reviled and disrespected. At times like these, we must compensate for those placid times."

  "You're not going to hit him for another raise?" asked Remo.

  "It is not a raise like some sweeper of dirt or planter of seed, but just an honest tribute to the House of Sinanju."

  "Sure, sure," mumbled Remo. He knew gold was delivered by submarine to this village in North Korea, as stipulated in the agreement between Dr. Harold W. Smith, representing his organization, and Chiun, representing the village. This amount of gold-Chiun did not accept paper money considering it only a promise dependent upon the veracity of the sponsoring government-had steadily increased over the decade, the biggest jump coming most recently, when Chiun had insisted that the amount be doubled because Remo could now be considered a Master of Sinanju also, since he would one day succeed Chiun, and therefore the village deserved double compensation for double masters.

  Remo shut the door of the suite behind them.

  "Our tribute must be doubled again because…" said Chiun.

  "Because why, Little Father?"

  "I am thinking,"

  "You'll find something."

  "I detect anger in your voice."

  "I don't think it's fair t
o Smitty."

  "Fair?" said Chiun, his longer fingernails fluttering before him, shock upon his normally placid face. "Fair? Was it fair when Tamerlaine all but closed the East for productive work, during the reign of his descendants? Was it fair during the gruesome depths of European history?"

  The gruesome depths Chiun referred to was the condition of Europe after Napoleon, when there was almost a century of peace interrupted by only one short war. And worse, there were no pretenders to thrones intriguing to unseat one king or another with the silent hand during the night. During those years, the rations were meager in the village of Sinanju.

  "It may come as a shock to you, Little Father, but Smitty is not the Austro-Hungarian empire."

  "He is white. I am only making up for what other whites have done to the House of Sinanju. How they have cheated the House of Sinanju."

  "Nobody lives to cheat the House of Sinanju."

  "There is cheating and there is cheating. If I pay you less than you are worth, which seems impossible, then I am cheating you. If I do this just because you are willing to take less, then I am still cheating you."

  "When did this happen?"

  "According to your calendar, 82 b.c., 147 a.d., 381 a.d., 562 a.d., 904 a.d., 1351 a.d., 1822 a.d., and 1944 a.d., the Depression."

  "The Depression? There was a world war going on then."

  "For the House of Sinanju that is a Depression. Everybody hires local talent."

  "That's the draft," said Remo.

  And Chiun explained that for the House of Sinanju, the good times were when there were small wars and rumors of wars, when societies verged on revolution and when leaders slept uneasily because of nagging thoughts of who might depose them. These were such times and as the Master of Sinanju, it behooved Chiun to bargain effectively, for-as it always happened periodically-either a very fierce war using amateur help or a deep and severe peace using no one was right around the corner.

  "I wouldn't mind peace, Little Father, and each man dwelling in his home without fear of his neighbor. I believe in those things. That's why I work for Smitty."

  "That is all right, Remo. I am not worried. You will grow up. After all, you have only been learning for a few short years now."