"Behold," she shouted triumphantly. "The emissary of a new age!"
Light flooded the clearing. It was mostly white light, like calcium set on fire, but there were smaller blue and red and green lights mixed in with the overpowering white ones, and they illuminated the tall form of Amanda Bull, her arms raised as if she were Caesar before his armies.
"My God," the frizzy-haired FOES receptionist gasped, "it's just like the movie." Her name was Ethel Sump, and she had seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind sixteen times, seventeen if you counted the time she sat through it four times in one evening and fell asleep midway through the midnight showing, only to wake up on the floor of the deserted theater the next morning to the sound of her dry popcorn belch.
The others froze where they were, the light etching expressions of amazement on their open faces.
Remo dropped flat and shut his eyes until he could close down the sensitive pupils of his eyes and not be blinded by the light.
He listened.
"Citizens of Earth," Amanda called. "I am the chosen representative of the new Earth, an Earth in which war and pestilence and sexism will be no more. From the distant star Betelgeuse comes the mighty World Master, architect of the golden age that is about to dawn. He has entrusted me with the task of recruiting preparation groups through which his teachings will enable Earth's glorious destiny to be fulfilled." Amanda paused to catch her breath, then said, "We ask you to join us now."
The speech had a remarkable effect on the members of FOES. It went right over their heads.
"Huh? What's she talking about?" someone demanded, squinting through the light.
"Something about improving the world," Ethel Sump said. "I don't see the penguin. Where's the penguin, Mr. Greeley?"
But Remo had already rolled into the trees and was on his feet running. He moved through the trees, circling to get around behind the lights. He was disturbed by the sudden appearance of those lights from something as big and powerful as this ship or whatever it was. Machinery, especially big machinery, always sent out vibrations. But Remo had picked up nothing like that.
Remo could see that the object was not sitting on the ground, but floated perhaps a yard or so above it. He sensed no engines or motors, felt no flow of air to indicate fans or jets or any other type of motive force. Just the heat of high-intensity lights and a blankness where there should have been vibration.
It was eerie and unsettling. Remo didn't even sense much mass, even though the object was bigger than a bus and made of some silvery metal, if its polished surface was any indication.
There should at least have been mass, he thought, if not vibration. Instead, Remo felt emptiness or hollowness, as if the UFO were almost completely weightless, or if it could somehow suspend gravity.
Remo got behind the object unseen. The lights were just as strong there, too. So Remo shut out the glare by pinching his lids down, and drifted closer to the thing, whatever it was.
Still no vibration.
With his hands extended Remo touched the hull of the floating object. It gave way slightly before his delicate touch, like a beach ball touched by a swimming child.
Remo's sensitive fingers felt vibration now. Electrical activity. But still nothing like what he would expect of a floating monster like this. Maybe it ran on batteries. How many size D batteries would it take to power a ship across deep space? Remo didn't know. What happened when the batteries went dead? Did they stop at the intergalactic grocery store and buy more? He put his fingers on the fabric of the space ship, ready to tear it open, when suddenly a thin, reedy voice emanated from inside the cool skin of the UFO and said, "Preparation Group Leader. An unauthorized person has ventured too close to my craft. Retreat a distance of fifty meters, please."
"Everybody run," Amanda Bull yelled, her voice shocked. And she and the FOES group all ran as a deep humming grew in pitch; at the same time the lights all over the object dimmed in inverse ratio to the humming.
Under his fingers, Remo felt the vibrations intensify. He decided to back off until he found what the humming was, but as he ran, the humming seemed to follow him. Or something did, because his skin became hot. There was a warmth under his clothes, which turned into a burning sensation, especially in the places where his clothes were tight, in the backs of the knees, down the back, and even in his feet.
While he was running he glanced back. The UFO floated into the sky and, its lights extinguished, vanished past the treetops. At the same time the sound of the FOES van leaving the scene rapidly came to his ears.
Only when they were both gone did the burning stop. But Remo had already collapsed. And he couldn't explain why.
?Chapter Six
The first time the telephone rang, the Master of Sinanju ignored it. He was engrossed in his beautiful dramas. Not that Chiun would have deigned answer the insistent ringing even if he were not already occupied. The Master of Sinanju was not a servant. He did not answer telephones, which invariably rang because some inconsiderate and unimportant fat white person wished to speak with Remo and was too lazy to write a letter or appear in person, which were the only proper ways to communicate with someone. Usually the calls were from Emperor Smith, which made no difference to Chiun. Just because the Master of Sinanju treated Smith like an emperor, it did not mean that Chiun liked Smith or took his calls. Just his gold.
The second time the phone rang, there were commercials coming over the Betamax, and Chiun quickly went to the phone, knowing that he had exactly 180 seconds to handle the interruption.
At first, Chiun was merely going to crush the receiver into dust, which he knew from past experience would permanently silence the device. But this usually caused Remo to complain, except when Remo was unhappy with Smith, in which case Remo might crush the phone himself. In deference to his pupil, Chiun caught a loop of phone wire and, with an upward swipe of a single long-nailed finger, neatly severed the cord. If Remo complained later, Chiun would point to the cut cord as an excellent example of the art of the Killing Nail, which would probably silence Remo.
The Master of Sinanju returned to the Betamax just in time to catch the climax of "As the Planet Revolves" and Julie's shocking admission of her kleptomania.
Five minutes later, the Betamax stopped dead.
Chiun's wispy beard and hair trembled slightly, and his hazel eyes turned to slits. This had never before happened. Had the stupid machine broken? It was a gift from Smith and therefore the handiwork of whites, and subject to difficulties as all white things were. Chiun got up to examine the device.
There was a knock at the door. A timid knock. Then a small voice called through the panel, "Mr. Yung Man? Sorry about the electricity. I was told that I should give you a message from your son. He said to cut the electricity first because you never answered the phone and might be watching television, in which case you'd never hear me knock because of your hearing problem..."
"Go away, idiot," Chiun called. "You have the wrong person. You are speaking to the Master of Sinanju, who can hear a blade of grass grow outside his window. Begone."
"But your son, Remo, asked me to give you a message."
The startled hotel manager suddenly found himself staring into a wrinkled face where he could have sworn a closed veneer door had stood only a second before. There was a door, then there was no door, just the old Oriental in the silk bathrobe. But no sound or motion of the opening of the door.
"Where is my son?" demanded the old Oriental. "What message does he send?"
"He— he's sick. He's at a phone booth next to a Burger Triumph stand on the main highway leading to Chickasha, just south of here. He said you should come right away."