Willingham was there in an hour.
He spotted the stone immediately. He was a large lumbering man with large freckles sun-tickled from their winter hibernation. He wore a tan suit and a blue ascot.
"Oh," he said, and "no" he said. His dark brown eyes rolled back into his forehead, and he weaved momentarily in place. He shook his head and gasped.
"No," he said firmly, and as his body regained its normal circulation, his lips tightened. His eyes narrowed and he moved methodically to the stone, ignoring Valerie and Remo.
He lowered himself to both knees and pressed his head to the marble base three times. Then with great force of will he turned to Valerie and asked: "When did you discover this?"
"When I did it," Remo said cheerily.
"You did this? Why did you do this?" Willingham asked.
"I didn't think it was a true yearning of man's cosmic consciousness," said Remo.
"How could you do it?" asked Willingham. "How? How?"
So Remo pressed two fingers tight together in a light curve and with the same loose wristed snap made another line through the circle on the great stone. It crossed the first line at right angles, leaving an X.
"That's how," Remo said. "It's really not too hard. The secret, as in all better use of your body, is in breathing and rhythm. Breathing and rhythm. It looks fast, but it's really a function of the slowness of your hand being slower than the rock. You might say the rock moves out of the way of your fingers."
And with snapping fingers and rock dust flying from the great stone, Remo carved neatly through the spray of Joey 172 and the stiff bird and the curving raised snake: REMO.
"I can do it left-handed, too," he said.
"Ohhh," moaned Valerie, covering her eyes.
Willingham only nodded silently. He backed out of the display room and shut the door behind him. Remo heard a whirring. A large steel sheet descended from the ceiling, coming to a neat clicking stop at the floor. The room was sealed.
"Damn," said Valerie, running to the phone in the wall. She dialed. "I'm getting the police," she said to Remo over her shoulder. "This place is built like a walk-in safe. We'll never get out. Can't reason with Willingham after your insanity. He'll leave us here to rot. Why did you do it?"
"I wanted to express myself," said Remo.
"The line's dead," said Valerie. "We're trapped."
"Everyone is trapped," said Remo, remembering a talk long ago in which Chiun had explained confinement. "The only difference between people is in the size of their trap."
"I don't need philosophy. I need to get out of here."
"You will," said Remo. "But your fear isn't working for you."
"Another religious nut, like Willingham and his rock. Why do I always meet them?" asked Valerie. She sat down on the pedestal of the great stone. Remo sat down next to her.
"Look. All your life you've been trapped. Everyone is."
She shook her head. "Not buying," she said.
"If you're poor, you can't afford to travel, so you're trapped in your home town. If you're rich, you're trapped on earth unless you're an astronaut. And even they are trapped by the air they have to bring with them. They can't leave their suits or their ship. But even more than that, every human being is trapped by his life. We're surrounded on one end by our birth and the other by our death. We can't get out of our lives. These walls are just a small period in our trapped lives anyhow, see?"
"I need a way out of here, and you're giving me a pep talk."
"I could get you out of anything but your ignorance," Remo said, and it surprised him how much like Chiun he was sounding.
"Get me out of here."
"I will after I'm finished with it," said Remo.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm the one who's got Willingham and his friends trapped."
"Oh, Jesus," said Valerie. "Now not only are we trapped, Willingham is too."
"Exactly," said Remo. "He's trapped by his devotion to this ugly hunk of stone back here. I've got him."
"I'd rather be him," said Valerie, and she lowered her head into her hands and moaned about how she always met them. From the man in Paterson, New Jersey, who had to strap on a five foot medieval sword before he could get it up, to the Brooklyn dishwasher who had to lather her up with foaming Liquicare before he would do it. And now, the worst. Locked in a disguised safe with a guy who thinks the outside world is trapped because they have a rock inside with them.
"Why do I always meet them?" screamed Valerie, and she knew her screams would not be heard because the whole freaking room was lined with lead. They had even sealed off the beautiful north windows. Willingham had muttered something about protection from the north wind as though the ugly box of a rock was going to catch a headcold.
"Why me, Lord?" cried Valerie Gardner. "Why me?"
"Why not you?" asked Remo just as logically, and when he tried to comfort her with his hands, she shrugged away, saying she would rather do it with a walrus in aspic than with Remo.
Her anger turned to boredom and she started yawning. She asked Remo what time it was.
"Late," he said. "We've been here about five hours and forty-three minutes. It's eight-thirty-two and fourteen seconds."
"I didn't see you look at a watch," Valerie said.
"I'm the best watch there is," said Remo.
"Oh, great," said Valerie, and she curled up in front of the stone and dozed off. An hour later, the square metal slab locking them in raised with a whirring sound. Valerie woke up. Remo smiled.
"Mr. Willingham, thank god," said Valerie, and then she shook her head. Mr. Willingham was nude except for a loincloth and a draping of yellow feathers in a robe around his body. He carried a stone knife in front of him. Six men followed him. Two ran to Valerie, throwing her to the floor and pinning her arms. The other four rushed to Remo, two grabbing one foot each and the other two going for his wrists.
"Hi, fellas," Remo said. He let himself be lifted. They brought him to the very top of the stone called Uctut. Willingham approached, the knife held high. He spoke in a language Remo couldn't recognize. It sounded like stone clicking against stone, popping sounds with the tongue of a language kept in secret over the centuries.
"Your heart will not recompense your foul deed for it is not enough for the desecration you have performed," said Willingham in English.
"I thought I improved the stone," Remo said.
"No, Mr. Willingham, no," cried Valerie. The two men stuffed part of their robes in her mouth.
"You may save yourself pain if you tell us the truth," said Willingham.
"I like pain," Remo said.
The man on his right wrist was gripping too tightly and would lose control of his strength shortly. The one on the left was too loose, and the men at Remo's feet had no protection from his yanking his legs back and driving their ribcages into their intestines if he wished. He did not wish-yet.
"If you do not give me the information I seek, we will kill the girl," said Willingham.
"That's even better than giving me pain. I can live with that," said Remo.
"We will kill her horribly," said Willingham.
"What will be will be," said Remo philosophically.
He glanced down over the stone edge to the floor, where Valerie tried desperately to shake loose. Her face turned purple in fear and rage and hysteria.
"Let her go," said Remo, "and I'll tell you everything you want to know."
"Why you did this awful thing and everything?" asked Willingham.
"And even where you can reach Joey 172," said Remo.
"We know where we can reach Joey 172. We've known since the day after he did his horror. It is for the American people to make restitution, not us. Uctut wants proper restitution, not for his priests to soil their hands with unclean blood, but for the people of the offender to offer up to us the offender. To make the sacrifice through our hands but not by our hands."