"I can't. I don't think I could."
"You're welcome to come if you change your mind."
Woodenly Remo stood up. "Thanks. I have to go."
Sister Novella followed him to the door. "It was nice of you to stop by," she said as if they were discussing a passing rainstorm, not a human life blown out like a guttering candle.
At the door Sister Novella said, "She never got over the loss of St. Theresa's, you know."
"Yeah," Remo croaked.
"It was perfectly understandable, I suppose. The orphanage was her life's work. She was quite devoted to it. And after all, it was where she was raised."
Remo turned. "What?"
"Sister Mary was an orphan, too. You didn't know?"
"No," Remo said dully.
"Who better to understand the wants and fears of her charges than someone who had been through such a loss herself?"
"I guess you're right. Thanks for telling me that."
"You're quite welcome, Mr. Williams. Go with Christ."
Remo walked out into the Oklahoma sun with eyes that saw and ears that barely heard. He climbed into his rented car and drove around in circles well into the evening.
When he got tired, he pulled into a motel near an elevated highway in a ramshackle part of the city called Bricktown and lay in bed, replaying the scene in the nursing home over and over in his mind while freight whistles blew long and lonesome in the night.
Already it seemed so unreal he wondered if it had been a dream.
One thought kept coming back to haunt him: who was the rugged man who had left him at the orphanage so many years ago?
Chapter 19
There had been a hard rain, and the pattering drops had made little craters in the Sonoran Desert. The pipe-organ cacti were looking hardy. Cholla blossoms made amber-and-ruby splotches against the sand, which wasn't so much red as gold in the morning light.
Crying River lay quiet under the hot sun. Sunny Joe Roam sent his horse across its golden sand crust, which made brittle sounds like breaking potato chips under each hoof fall.
At the foot of Red Ghost Butte, he dismounted and unsaddled his horse, saying, "Don't know how long I'll be, Sanshin. You take your ease."
The big horse stood immobile.
Roam spanked its flank. "Go on now, you stubborn hay burner."
The horse remained where he was.
"Have it your own way, then." Roam gave him a pat on the muzzle and started up the butte.
The trail was all but invisible if one didn't know the way. Sunny Joe skirted a fuzzy clump of teddy bear cholla and picked his way up. It was no place to ride a horse. Only bighorn rams and fool Indians climbed Red Ghost Butte, Sunny Joe thought ruefully.
The trail snaked, vanishing and resuming.
"Getting too old for this," he said, taking a rest on a red sandstone outcropping.
Sunny Joe Roam reached the cave thirty minutes later, thinking that when he was young and full of vinegar, he used to run up the butte and not pant for air. He panted now. Maybe it was the damned dust.
The cave mouth was sheltered by a shield of woven reed covered with plucked brittle-bush and ocotillo. Sunny Joe reached into the shield and pulled it loose. Setting it to one side, he let the old musty damp smell wash over him. It was not a bad smell. It suggested caves and death and ancient mystery.
He entered. All light faded fifteen feet in. He stepped carefully into the zone of darkness, then began counting his steps, deviating neither left nor right. He had no wish to tread on the feet of his honored ancestors.
When he counted thirty-three paces-it had been forty-seven back when he was a short-legged boy-Sunny Joe stopped and dropped to the dirt floor. He stared into the darkness. The darkness seemed to stare back. But he knew there were no eyes in the darkness, only hollows.
"O Ko Jong Oh, I am come to remind you of your promise to the Sun On Jo people, whom you founded in the days before the white man and the Hopi and the Navajo. Hear me, ancestor spirit. I seek guidance." From the darkness came only silence.
"I seek your wisdom in the hour of our greatest need, O Ko Jong Oh."
In the darkness something stirred.
Sunny Joe Roam felt his heart leap with fear and joy at once.
"Guide me, Ko Jong Oh, for blinded by bitterness and white ways, I have strayed from the path of Sun On Jo and cannot find the path back to my own heart." The rustle persisted.
Something warm brushed Sunny Joe's left hand where it rested on the cave floor. Like the passing of a spirit, it slipped furtively past.
He turned. And into the zone of light the thin tail of a deer mouse skittered. A chill washed over Sunny Joe's tall, lanky form.
Turning back to the unresponsive blackness, he said quietly, "And if it is your wish that I die in the here and now, I will die without complaint, among my honored ancestors, whom I have sorely let down."
Chapter 20
All night freight trains rattled through Bricktown, their whistles blowing mournfully. But Remo Williams slept through it all.
He was back in the Void and he was not alone. Remo sensed a presence. But there was nothing but blackness all around him.
In his dream Remo called out, "Anyone here?"
No one answered. But the feeling was strong. Closing his eyes, Remo listened for the gulp and wheeze of heart and lungs, but there were no such sounds. Just a feeling of imminence and menace.
Opening his eyes, Remo saw thin orbs regarding him. They winked out like a black cat closing his eyes in a deep cave.
Remo blinked. Had the eyes been real? They were hazel, the eye color of Sinanju Masters going back who knew how long. Something about the eyes made Remo tense up.
Remo padded toward the patch of blackness where the disembodied eyes had floated. When he reached the spot where he judged they had been, he stopped. The darkness before him seemed palpable.
"Hello?" he said.
In response something struck him in the solar plexus.
Air escaped his lungs in a harsh, explosive gust, and Remo staggered back. A Sinanju blow. Nothing less could do that to him.
Out of the Void came a harsh laugh Remo knew well, because he could never forget it.
Nuihc!
Turning in place slowly, Remo wove a finger web around his personal defensive zone. He stepped left two paces, then right three. Backing up, still turning, he protected himself while scanning the dark for his opponent.
But Nuihc, the renegade Master of Sinanju who had been Chiun's pupil before Remo, craftily kept his distance.
"Come on, you rat bastard," Remo growled. "Come out and fight like a man."
A cold voice said, "You must defeat me, mongrel Master, if you are to return to the world of flesh."
"I never got a good crack at you when you were alive, so we're overdue," Remo said, stepping this way and that, wishing he had something visible to zero in on. Obviously Nuihc was wearing black, his face somehow blackened down to the eyelids. Only when he opened them again would Remo have him dead to rights.
As long as he kept his eyes shut, Nuihc was as blind as Remo. Yet he had struck a perfect blow with his eyes closed. How?
Remo listened. His feet made no sound in the endless black plane of the Void. Nuihc hadn't detected his footfalls. Soft as they were normally, here they were completely soundless.
I get it, Remo thought suddenly. He zeroed in on my voice.
Turning in place, Remo slowly eased himself into a crouching position. And waited.
Time passed. How much there was no way of knowing, no method of measuring. Remo made himself as still as a stone. It might not help here in the Void, but the old Sinanju tricks rarely failed.
All the while time dragged by, Remo watched for the cold slit eyes of Nuihc to open a crack.
The mocking voice broke the silence. "What is wrong, whelp of the West?"
Remo kept still and silent.