Encounter Group td-56 Page 3

  Remo had listened many times to the story of the poor village of Sinanju on the West Korean Bay, which lent out its best men as hired assassins to the great thrones of history so that starvation would not force the village to "send its babies home to the sea" because there was not food for them. The House of Sinanju developed the assassin's art of Sinanju— which was the source of all lesser martial arts— into a tradition that Remo and Chiun currently carried on in service to CURE. Remo just nodded and asked flatly, "Which technique, Little Father?"

  Instead of answering, Chiun made as if to stand up and, legs poised under his kimono, sent his stiffened index finger flashing out and snipped off a lock of Remo's dark hair before Remo could react.

  Before the lock fell to Remo's thigh, Chiun had seated himself again, arms folded.

  Remo, his reflexes blindingly fast for a human being, caught himself in mid-strike. He had been too slow blocking Chiun's thrust, and the tips of his manicured fingers froze a centimeter in front of Chiun's parchment countenance.

  "I am still reigning Master," said Chiun, amused that Remo's counterthrust had been initiated before Remo became conscious of the need to defend or strike. It was only Remo's brain catching up with his reflexes that stopped the death blow.

  The lock of hair fell to Remo's crossed thigh as he dropped his arm.

  "You know the art of the Killing Nail," said Chiun.

  "Yeah. It's not restricted to Sinanju. Others have used it, too."

  "And animals," added Chiun. "The fingernail is a natural tool. Before the club, there was the nail. But Sinanju, realizing the power of the nail properly used, cultivated the growing of the nail to a certain length, learned how to harden it through diet and exercise, and used the nail as it was meant to be used. To perform our art."

  While he spoke, Chiun separated his hands and displayed them, palms inward, so that Remo could see the long, slightly curving knives that grew from Chiun's fingers and that Remo knew could open a man's jugular. Remo knew this because he had seen Chiun do that.

  "Older Masters have traditionally taken to the use of the Killing Nail. It is the symbol of the ultimate assassin, the man whose weapons grow from his body and, if broken, will grow back. The Knives of Eternity, they are called."

  "Little Father..." Remo began.

  Chiun raised one delicate nail for silence. "Although you are young and a white, Remo, you are ready to take up the weapons of the eldest Masters. You are ready to let your nails grow. It is a happy day."

  "Little Father, I cannot," Remo said quietly.

  "Cannot? Cannot?" Chiun squeaked questioningly. "Do not be fearful of this honor, Remo. You need only trust me. I will guide you through the most difficult stages."

  "Little Father, I am not ready for this."

  "But you are ready, Remo. I know this," Chiun said firmly.

  When Remo just sat there uncomfortably, Chiun was puzzled. "What troubles you, my son?"

  "It is not my way to wear my fingernails long," Remo said quietly.

  "Way?" snapped Chiun. "Way? Sinanju is your way. You are a Master of Sinanju. And the Killing Nail is the way of Sinanju. I do not understand you."

  "In America," Remo explained, knowing that Chiun would not understand American customs, or else would dismiss them as unimportant if he did, "men clip their nails short. They do not wear their nails long. Only women do. It is considered unmanly to have long fingernails."

  "I know this. Have I not lived in your uncivilized country since before our first meeting?"

  "Then you understand what I am trying to tell you, Little Father," Remo said hopefully.

  "No. I understand only that I am talking to an idiot. Remo, I am offering you something no one of Sinanju has ever been offered so young. Something no white could ever comprehend, and what obviously no white will ever appreciate. Especially you, who could not even stop a fat white fire-insect from destroying an important and beautiful building." At that point, Chiun lapsed into abusive Korean in which the phrase "pale piece of pig's ear" was the least offensive remark made.

  Remo knew there would be no talking to Chiun now, and there wasn't.

  "I apologize, Little Father. Perhaps when I am older. Perhaps if we survive and that day comes when I take over as reigning Master— maybe then I will be able to do this thing."

  "Why not now?" Chiun demanded in English.

  "Because the work that I do for Smith calls for secrecy. That is why I am dead."

  "You are dead because you are the dead night tiger," Chiun snapped back, forgetting that by acknowledging Remo as the dead night tiger of Sinanju— the white man legend had foretold would be trained as the greatest Master of them all and the avatar of Shiva, the Destroyer— Chiun was acknowledging Remo's worthiness in the eyes of his ancestors.

  "Maybe. But I was made to appear dead because I have been given the sword of my country to carry into battle, and it is a sword that must be carried in secret."

  "A paper sword," Chiun scoffed.

  "The Constitution, yes. My job is to operate outside the Constitution so that it will survive and my country will not fall."

  "And so you dishonor your sword each time you wield it." Chiun spat on the floor. "How white. How American."

  "Nevertheless, it is my sword. And if the hand that carries that sword becomes conspicuous, then the man will become known and his sword will be taken from him, along with his life. Where will that leave America? Or Sinanju?"

  "I would train another. One with fingernails."

  "But you have trained me. And you have made a contract with America so that I can carry out America's work— in secret."

  "Do not remind me of my shame. Do not remind me that I have been forced to train a white meat-eater in the greatest of all professions, that of assassin, and that the greatest house of assassins has been reduced to this. I have trained you, Remo, because that is my obligation, because you learned well— up to a point— and because I had mistakenly thought you possessed the soul of a Korean. But I now know this is untrue. The Korean soul is hard like bamboo, and the fingernail grows from that hard soul. You obviously have a white soul, soft and like mist. When you die, your body will decay, and the wind will dissipate your pale, wispy soul, as happens to all whites when they die. But Korean souls are hardy. They live on. Yours will not."

  "Bulldooky," said Remo, who wasn't sure how much of this to believe, nor how much of it Chiun himself believed.

  ?Chapter Three

  Crouching in the grass before the barbed-wire-topped fence, Amanda Bull felt a surge of exhilaration flow through her willowlike body. The feeling, which had been coming on since dusk, had grown more intense as she drove the official FOES van containing members of the Little Rock, Arkansas, chapter of the group, dressed in Army surplus fatigues with firearms purchased at Sears, Roebuck, and their grim faces blackened with the rubbings from burned Gallo wine corks. It was both a swelling of her heart and a burning in the pit of her stomach, this feeling Amanda felt. Sometimes she thought the feeling was fear; other times it felt like the purest kind of excitement imaginable, like what Amanda imagined an orgasm felt like. Amanda had never had an orgasm, although she thought she'd come close once, while listening to Betty Friedan speak at a convention.

  But now, flat on the grass, a .22 Swift rifle cradled in her arms and the clear Arkansas moonlight reflecting off the RESTRICTED AREA sign on the fence before her too-bright eyes, Amanda Bull realized exactly what the feeling was.

  It was power, pure unadulterated power. And she loved it.

  Power had come to Amanda Bull only a week before, in the forests of Arkansas amid the smell of apple blossoms, when the strange voice from the UFO had beckoned her, irresistibly, to enter. There had been no time to run away, or even to think. There was just that reedy voice, which had seemed to speak to her very soul, as if the owner of that voice knew her innermost thoughts and voiced them, but in a new way. A way that was not confused or fearful, but strong and intelligent and wise.

 
So Amanda had entered the spaceship. She found it full of golden light and shiny metallic surfaces, and when Amanda had oriented herself, she realized she stood in an outer chamber of the ship, but that its other occupant remained within the inner chamber. She could see a pebbled-glass rectangle, like a window in a drive-in bank, which had light coming from the other side— the inner chamber of the ship. Amanda peered in, but the pebbled glass defeated her vision.

  Then a shadowy figure stepped up to the glass from the other side.

  "Oh. There you are," Amanda had said. She tried to make out details of the creature, but the thick glass broke and distorted the outline, which was backlit so that even its color was impossible to figure out. But Amanda thought she saw feelers or antennae protrude from the bulbous head, and she shivered.

  The voice spoke again.

  "I have come across a great distance, Amanda Bull. I am an emissary from a distant world, one that circles the star known to your people as Betelgeuse."

  "Beetle juice?" Amanda said wonderingly.

  "Yes. That is how it is pronounced."

  "Who are you?"

  "I told you. I am the World Master. I have been dispatched to this planet to teach. I am a teacher. And you are my first pupil, whom I have chosen for a historic task."

  "Task?"

  "Through you, a new age will dawn on this troubled planet. An age without fear, without weapons, without hate. For I have been sent to purge this planet of a great evil. Once this evil has been eradicated, peace will return to this tiny world. Gone will be war, gone crime, gone poverty; gone will be—"

  "Sexism?" Amanda said hopefully.

  "Yes, sexism. That terrible injustice has long ago been banished from my world. My world is a paradise, as are other worlds I have touched, as will be the Earth when our work is completed, yours and mine, Amanda Bull. But I must have your help."

  "Why me?" asked Amanda, who was still getting used to believing in flying saucers.

  "Because, Amanda Bull, you have been watched and are known to me as a worthy instrument. You can breathe the atmosphere of this world. You can walk its streets freely. I cannot. I must remain in the control core of my ship, where I can breathe the air of my world until the moment of destiny has arrived. Until then, I must remain hidden. My existence must be known to only a few, for there are those who, not understanding, may attempt to capture or kill me before my teachings have borne fruit."

  "I understand," Amanda said, wondering if the alien had noticed the ugly hair on the bridge of her nose.

  "You know there are grave things wrong with the world you live in. These things can be changed. By you. With my help. Are you ready, Amanda Bull?"

  "I— I think I am. Yes... I know I am. What's first? What do we change first? We can dump those bastards in Washington and replace them with friends of mine. Or—"

  "None of those things," the World Master said. "There is only one task to be undertaken. All the rest will follow naturally."

  "Yes?" Amanda said expectantly.

  "You must," the reedy voice told her, "destroy all of the nuclear weapons on this planet."

  "Uh. Ugh. All of them?"

  "Starting with America's missile systems."

  Amanda suddenly felt very sick. Taking on the U.S. military establishment wasn't exactly an appealing thought.

  "There are a lot of missiles," she said weakly. "Hundreds, maybe."

  "Thousands. That is why you must organize preparation groups for the task. You will be Preparation Group Leader Amanda Bull. You will recruit the groups. You will direct them. I will supply the tools and advise you."

  "Where am I going to get followers?"

  "Not far from here are several who will follow you. You have met them. I watched you. And when we descend from the skies, you and I, to fulfill their greatest desire, to make contact with beings from another world, they will follow. Are you agreeable?"

  "Yes... definitely," said Amanda, who liked the idea of being in charge of something— especially of something as big as this. "Just one question: are you a man or a woman?"

  "On my world, those words are meaningless. I am a person."

  And for the second time that night, Amanda Bull smiled. "I'm glad," she had said. "Now I know everything's going to be all right."

  * * *

  It hadn't been hard to convince the Little Rock, Arkansas chapter of FOES. Not when a spacecraft floated down upon them, as if it were weightless. The World Master had told Amanda that the lightness of the ship was produced by antigravity generators. Solar powered, of course. At first the sky watchers, confronted with the very thing they searched for, scattered in a blind panic. But Amanda called out to them. As the ship alighted, its lights dimming enough for her to be seen, Amanda stepped into view.

  "Hey! It's that blonde," someone shouted. "The one with the hair on her nose."

  And one by one the others drifted back, while Amanda explained about the World Master from Betelgeuse and the mission she had been given, the mission they were invited to share. Suddenly they weren't frightened anymore. They were eager.

  "We want to see him," they shouted like kids at recess. "Let's see the alien."

  "Here's not an alien," someone else cut in. "He's what you call an extra-terrestrial."

  "No, he's an ancient astronaut."

  But when a rectangle of pebbled glass showed suddenly in front of the object on the ground, and the torso of the creature within showed itself weirdly, a hush gripped the group as if they had been asphyxiated. The World Master spoke no words, but everyone saw it wave two hands, and everyone saw that those hands were both on the right side of its body.

  "Oh, wow," said Orville Sale. "A real extraterrestrial. A genuine creature from Out There. Hey, everybody! We're all contactees now," meaning that they could claim contact with alien beings.

  "Yeah, but I'm not so sure about this missile stuff," said Lester Gex, who ran a secondhand bookstore in Damascus, Arkansas, and who, although a member in good standing with FOES, sometimes thought the group had more than its share of wackos. "What I mean is, this could be serious business. What if we here start disarming America and over there in Russia, they get wind of this and decide this is their chance to blow us all away?"

  "The World Master has already explained that to me," Amanda called out quickly. "We're going to operate in secret. Like a commando team. The government will be too embarrassed by our success to dare let any of this get into the papers. That way, the Russians won't know a thing until we begin to work on their weapons."

  "I still don't like it," said Lester Gex. "I'm leavin'."

  Lester Gex walked ten paces in his Wrangler boots when a silver tube popped out below the port in the spaceship, and a cold blue pencil of light licked out and dropped him in his tracks, a burnhole just over the eighth dorsal vertebra of his back. He never made a sound. He was dead.

  "No one must be allowed to interfere with the dawn of the new era of peace and goodness that will be Earth's once we have prepared the human race," the World Master said musically.

  "That's right," Amanda Bull said sternly.

  "Oooh," a woman said, looking at the body, from which a curl of stinking smoke rose. "It was just like a laser."

  "Except it was blue," Orville Sale pointed out. "Lasers are red, so it couldn't have been a laser, even though it burned Les like one."

  "Yes, that's right."

  After that, there were no more problems.

  * * *

  That had been a week ago. A week in which to arm and train Preparation Group One and take them out to scout their intended targets. The World Master gave the orders, which were relayed by Amanda Bull. Once each night, she drove out alone to a prearranged spot where the ship was always waiting, to report and receive new orders. The World Master always received her from behind the pebbled glass. Last night Amanda had reported that Preparation Group One was ready. Or, as she put it, "as ready as they're ever going to be."

  "Very good, Preparation Group Leader Ama
nda Bull. Your first target will be the 55th Missile Wing of the United States Air Force. Here are your instructions."

  Amanda subsequently learned that a missile "wing" was a loosely grouped cluster of missiles buried in scattered silos. The 55th Wing was deployed in a fan between 30 and 60 miles north of Little Rock. Because the silos, each holding a 103-foot Titan II missile, were deployed over such a wide area, they would have to attack them one at a time, retreat, and move on to the next target. It was not going to be easy, but as Amanda led Preparation Group One to within a few yards of the first missile site without being challenged by anyone, she thought that maybe it would not be all that hard, either.

  "Everybody keep down," Amanda hissed to the others.

  From the highway, the site seemed to be nothing more than an acre of land, fenced off, in which carefully trimmed grass grew. There were no buildings visible, just the sliding concrete silo roof set low to the ground and, not far from it, another concrete structure that was too squat to be a building. This contained electronic detection devices that were hooked up to the radar scoops set at intervals behind the perimeter fence.

  "Those thingies must be radar," whispered Lucy Lamar, a 32-year-old housewife who weighed 169 pounds and looked as if her scalp was growing stubby horns under her knit cap. This was because she hadn't had time to take the curlers out of her hair earlier that evening. Until a week ago, she had fervently believed that flying saucers were the advance force of an invasion fleet that lurked just beyond the moon, waiting for the proper moment to strike— which she knew would be on April 28, 1988, because she had read that in an article in UFO Pictorial Quarterly.

  "Yeah," said Amanda. "We don't have to worry about those. They're there to detect incoming missiles."

  "Then why aren't they pointed into the sky?" asked Orville Sale. "Look at them. They're all pointing out, not up."