"I'm climbing as fast as I can," Remo returned. The sharpness of the old Oriental's gaze hurt him in an indefinable way.
The old Oriental's mouth thinned disapprovingly over the strands of straggly beard that fluttered from his chin.
"That is your mistake," he snapped. "I am not teaching you to climb this edifice, but to use its inner strength to lift you to your goal. Arms that climb, tire. Buildings do not tire. Therefore you will use the building's strength, not your own."
Remo wanted to say that was bullshit, but he had already gotten this far by following instructions. His feet were splayed outward on the quarter-inch molding around the big sandwich-glass window. His palms pressed the glass, fingers flat, not clutching, but allowing the surface tension of his skin against the smooth glass to hold him in place. He felt like a bug.
And above him the old Oriental resumed his ascent like a monkey in a jet-black silk robe. Even the bottoms of his sandals were black as old tires.
Remo raised his hands over his head. He took hold of the molding above the window with bone-hard fingertips. He pulled downward. And like a gargantuan window shade, the facade seemed to drop under him. Except that the building stayed on its foundation. It was Remo who went up, as effortlessly as if climbing a helpful glass ladder.
Floor by floor, he followed the old Oriental until they were together on the rooftop. The old Oriental led him to a trapdoor and they slipped down into a dim hallway.
"Do as I do," the old Oriental whispered.
Remo followed him as soundlessly as a drifting wind. The old Oriental moved toward a black metal door in which a red pinpoint light glowed where the keyhole should have been.
"If we break it, it'll trigger an alarm," Remo warned.
"Then I will not break it," the old Oriental said. "Observe, now."
The old man placed his fingertips over the red pinpoint and drummed them silently until the light turned green. He pushed the door open casually and Remo followed him, a wondering expression on his face.
"How'd you do that? It's supposed to be impossible without a magnetic passcard."
"It is electrical," the old man said.
"Yeah?"
"So. I am electrical too. But my electricity is stronger. "
"That doesn't make any sense," Remo told the old Oriental as they moved down the corridor, two shadows in a deeper blackness. Then: "When are you going to teach me to do that?"
"When I sense your natural energies are equal to the task."
"What's that in real time?"
"Never. "
And Remo felt stung to his core.
They turned a corner and almost walked into a brown-uniformed security guard who stood before an unmarked door with an assault rifle raised protectively before him.
Remo hung back. Seeing the old Oriental continue his floating stride unchecked, he followed after him. The guard was looking right at them, evidently not registering their presence.
Then the guard looked away, and the old man froze. Remo froze too. And when the guard's gaze stared in their direction once more, he moved on, crossing the hallway with Remo close behind him, like his shadow.
Safely in another hallway, Remo wanted to know how it had been done.
"A man, when he looks directly at something, will perceive only something out of the ordinary," he was told. "You and I were part of the movement of air through this dark place, and therefore part of the vibration. But the corners of the eye will register any movement. That is why we stopped when we did."
They came to another pinpoint red light.
"Let me try this one, Remo offered. He placed his fingertips against the plate and started tapping in a dissynchronous rhythm.
The light remained red.
Impatiently the old Oriental stepped in and tapped the plate once. The light turned green.
"Was that you or me?" Remo asked as they closed the door behind them.
"It is all in the nails," the old Oriental said, shaking his wide sleeves free of his thin wrists. His nails were like pale blades. "Come, we are almost to our objective."
They entered a room filled with a low-level humming. As Remo's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the jerky movement of computer tape reels behind plastic panels. An air conditioner expelled chilled chemically tainted air.
"Which one do you think is our friend?' Remo breathed.
"It does not matter. We will destroy them all." Suddenly a pair of panels glowed in dull green light. They looked like flat blank eyes.
And a warm, generous, but completely unhuman voice spoke. "Welcome. And good-bye."
Then the center of the floor split down the middle and separated into identical falling panels.
Remo leapt for the only safety within reach. A hanging fluorescent light. He felt a sudden sharp weight on his right ankle and looked down.
Looking back up at him was the old Oriental's seamed countenance. He had Remo's ankle in one birdlike claw. But far more arresting was what was visible beyond the Oriental's robed form.
It looked like a gargantuan electronic well. It pulsed with a million lights and seemed to go down beyond the foundation of the building and into the bedrock itself.
The two halves of the floor lay flat against the north and south walls of the square well.
"We goofed, Little Father," Remo said. "The main computer isn't in this room. The whole building's a giant mainframe."
"Do you have a firm grip?" the old Oriental demanded in a squeaky voice. He was staring down into the pulsing lights of the abyss. A cold draft came up to flutter his hemline.
"I do," Remo said, looking up at the cracks forming in the ceiling around the light fixture. "But this fixture doesn't."
The old Oriental looked up with wistful features. "It is not strong enough to support us both," he said sadly.
"I guess this is the end."
"For me. Not for you. You are the future, but I am the past. Farewell, my son."
And the old Oriental simply let go. As Remo watched in horror, the old man tumbled past banks of lights, his face set, almost serene in its fatalism.
"Chiun! No!" Remo screamed. And woke up. Remo rolled out of bed. He was soaking in cold sweat. His fingers clutched his pillow in a death grip. He tried letting go, but they were like claws. He took a deep breath and started to feel his fingers warm with blood. Feeling returned to them, and slowly, painfully, the pillow dropped to the cold floor.
In the darkness, Remo whispered a single name: "Chiun. . . . "
Chapter 10
The Master of Sinanju took the shore road that led to the rock formation inscribed in the scrolls of his ancestors as the Horns of Welcome, which framed the normally forbidding waters of the West Korea Bay.
Here the shore was sand for a stretch. On either side, the sand gave way to grim granite rocks, covered with barnacles, that jutted out to the pounding surf like broken, petrified fingers. The sun was setting into the water, turning the gray choppiness of the sea the dull crimson of coagulating blood.
It lacked exactly thirty minutes to sunset. The appointed hour. And as Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, stepped onto the sand, out beyond the rocks a submarine emblazoned with the flag of the barbarian nation called, variously, America, the United States, and the USA, broke the water with such violence that it seemed as if the sea were hemorrhaging.
The name on the bow was Harlequin. A hatch clanged and a seaman in white clambered up. He brought a device set with twin disks of ground glass to his eyes so that his weak white vision could discern the minimal distance from his vessel to the shore of Sinanju, pearl of Asia, birthplace of the sun source, and the home of Chiun, in the northern reaches of divided Korea.
Chiun placed a hand to his forehead. It was a sign to the weak-eyed white that he was not yet ready to leave his home village. The seaman lowered his glasses and, like a fool, unnecessarily waved in response. Then he disappeared into his craft. Finally the vessel submerged, to sleep in the cold waters of the West Korea Bay another night, until the Master of Sinanju placed his hand over his heart to signal that he was ready to return to his adopted land.