When he awoke again, he was in his office, propped up in his chair by pillows. Chiun had somehow carried him there without so much as disturbing his sleep. But Smith had long since ceased to be amazed by the old man's abilities.
"Are you in discomfort, o Emperor?"
"I'm fine," Smith said.
He waited. And while he waited, he could almost hear death rushing toward him.
The discipline of Sinanju, as Chiun told Smith, was more than the development of the body. How much more, he could never explain to any man who not only allowed himself to be struck by a bullet, but whose very existence depended on the use of a telephone.
Chiun retired to a far corner of the office, as distant from the four computers as possible.
For Smith, the Folcroft computers were infallible, precise, perfect. But for Chiun, they were no more than machines, the emperor's toys, not to be trusted. Their artificial brains, made of tape and wire and droplets of molten metal, revolted him. They did not work the way that a brain was supposed to work. They collected information and regurgitated it on command. To Chiun and all the Masters of Sinanju who went before him, that was the smallest and most insignificant function of the human mind.
Chiun believed that the mind, with its labyrinthine possibilities and awesome power, held the force of the universe. Even ordinary minds, the dissipated, ignominious minds of the fat white people whom Smith's machines served, could create cities out of the air in the heat of the desert. They called these creations mirages, visions, dreams. They deemed them of no consequence and so were unable to enter and explore them.
In moments of crisis, frail young mothers were able to lift thousands of pounds with their bare hands to remove automobiles from the bodies of their children. But they discounted feats like this also, saying that they were no more than freak occurrences. Some of them claimed proudly that they were able to move pencils with the power of their minds. These were regarded either as human oddities or as clever charlatans.
Those who approached real power were disregarded entirely. A yogi in India during the early part of the twentieth century allowed himself to be buried alive for seven years. He was both interred and disinterred before hundreds of witnesses from several countries, including England and America. Yet all but his followers scoffed, calling the yogi's feat, for which he had prepared all his life, a hoax.
With evidence of their power all around them, people still would not believe.
And Chiun understood. Because to believe would be to step into the province of the impossible, the irrational, the uncontrollable. A place where there were no rules, no boundaries, no natural laws. A place of absolute freedom. Sinanju was not for everyone, because freedom, with its thousand demon fears, was not for everyone. For men like Smith, there was safety in bondage. That was why there would always be a Master of Sinanju, why his services would always be needed, despite the great mass of knowledge provided by the world's thinking machines, and why he would always be held as a secret, treasured thing by those who did not understand, but who accepted out of need.
The need was there now.
Remo was alive. The thread between Chiun's mind and his pupil's was almost a tangible thing, like the string of a harp that vibrates with the smallest breeze. Chiun had made Remo, taught him the arduous discipline of Sinanju, set him free. And with that freedom had come a link to all things seen and unseen, a million slender threads connecting Remo with the limitless universe, but most strongly to Chiun himself.
And so the old man sat cross-legged in his corner of the room, and cleared his mind of all thought, and slowed the workings of his body to a state approaching death in its stillness, a place where there was neither sight nor sound, and vibrated the string.
?Chapter Thirteen
In the cold stone-lined column where Remo had fallen, his heart pumped harder. The pupils of his eyes widened so that he could see every marking on the stones surrounding him, every filament of moss gathered in the damp darkness. The muscles of his back relaxed to readiness.
He didn't bother to think about what his body was preparing for. His mind was his body. Deep within him, a thread was coiling, strengthening, preparing to spring. His thoughts voided; he felt as if a heavy veil had been flung over his conscious brain, subduing it, allowing his instincts to take over.
The wall disappeared. The scent of moss, the cold, gone, all rationality, all reason, vanished, replaced by an urgency, a necessity to escape that was so strong that every fiber and nerve inside him, the very skin covering him, insensate as the shell of a sea animal now, directed him toward it.
First, the body curled into a tight ball at the far end of the tower. The motion was smooth and seamless. The retracting of the legs, the slow bending of the neck, the arms crossing in front, the back bent, pliable, then opening, releasing, uncoiling the spring, gaining momentum, thrusting out until his speed was as fast as a bullet's and the force behind it, the power generated by the invisible coiled thread inside his soul, as great as a tank's. He exploded through the wall feet first and landed standing.
For several seconds he remained still as his heart slowed down to normal and his senses returned. The wall of the stone column was collapsing, pouring gray dust out of the hole Remo had made while the great slabs of rock fell and broke. The noise came up on him slowly as his hearing returned, growing from a muffled rumble to a shattering din.
His skin warmed; he looked around. He was in a short hallway. The lighting was very bright. The walls and ceilings and floor were covered with white soundproof tile, littered on the far side with small particles of rock. His expulsion from the chamber had propelled some pieces deep into the wall.
A boulder jutted out of the hole. Others piled on top of one another, filling the gap. The noise muffled, and then ceased. There was no other sound.
At the end of the hallway, on the left-hand side, was an open door. From it issued a scent Remo recognized: sickly sweet, mingled with chemicals. But there were other smells, too, behind the odor of fallen limestone that permeated the corridor. Somewhere there were also green plants, and another scent as well. Bitter. Rich. Commonplace. Mornings, long ago. The ballet. Smith falling. The warehouse.
Coffee.
He walked toward the room at the end of the hall. It was much larger than it would appear from the size of the corridor, and contained a greenhouse of sorts, bathed in eerie ultraviolet light. Coffee plants in pots lined several shelves which stood to the right. Another bank of shelves containing wildly colored flowering plants stood in rows on the left side. Remo sniffed them. Their odor was sweet and cloying.
"Poppies," Arnold said, walking languidly toward him down the aisle between the two banks of shelves. He was wearing a white lab coat and rubber gloves. In the black light, his craterous face had lost all of its youth. He looked to Remo like a walking cadaver, wasted and rotting. When he smiled, his teeth shone like those in a bare skull.
"I must say, you do surprise me," he said genially. "My reverse tower was patterned after the French 'oubliettes' of the twelfth century." He extended one hand down the aisle, inviting Remo to lead the way toward the back of the room.
"You first," Remo said.
"You have a suspicious nature."
"Call me neurotic."
Arnold walked leisurely, picking off an occasional brown leaf as he moved among the plants, and chatting easily. "The term—'oubiliette,' I mean— comes from the verb 'oublier,' to forget. Prisoners were dropped into these holes and then ignored for the rest of their lives, which usually wasn't long." He shook his head. "The ones in France have lasted for centuries. I'm afraid my oubliette just didn't pass muster."