"Pak continued to watch and when he failed to return an uncle who also served the court followed him. And Pak saw the smoke settle around the man's shoulders and he was about to warn his uncle, when the smoke spoke, and a voice said 'May we enter?' and the uncle, surprised, said 'Yes,' and the smoke became man and struck, these people even then having long killing nails.
"Yet the stroke was not as strong as their magic and it wounded the uncle who struck on an interior line, and, being Sinanju, dispatched immediately this blood-drinking vermin. But the next smoke came to the outside and made many killing blows in the neck.
"The next day two more figures came up the road and they were Pak's father and brother and they camped near the forest. Pak went to join them and told them what he had seen and suggested they, all three, fall on this band. But his father, Wang, not the great one, insisted that Pak watch as they attacked those in the smoke so that if they failed, he would know all the ways they use in killing, for this was the first step. What you know, you can kill. Now the outside attack is a circle and the inside is a line."
"Jesus Christ, Chiun. Who do you think I am?" asked Remo angrily.
"It never hurts to repeat basic wisdom."
"It gets tiresome in the repeating," said Remo.
"So Pak returned to the forest and the next day his father and his brother approached and they knew the smoke was dangerous, and one, very casually, as if he were practicing a stroke, moved his sword through the smoke and Sinanju discovered one did not kill these blood-drinkers when they were smoke.
"So they walked on farther and Pak saw great clouds of smoke form. And then in an instant there were 17 of them and they taunted the Masters of Sinanju and said, 'Do you invite us in?' and the Masters nodded, and they attacked on the interior line with the finger and on the exterior with the sword. And Sinanju claimed 10, but we are assassins, not soldiers, and dying is no triumph nor does it feed the babies of Sinanju.
"And Pak now knew much of the way these blood-drinkers fought, but he thought there was more to learn. And he watched. But the next day, up the road came his only son, and while with pain he had watched his uncle die and father die and brother die, he could not watch his son die.
"So to the center of these bloodsuckers went Pak and laughed and said he was a Master of Sinanju and they would meet their deaths now. And they said they had killed Masters of Sinanju but Pak said they had only slain servants who had slain more of them. He said Sinanju knew all about them with their smoke and blood-drinking and he demanded they leave this forest and go live among the barbaric whites to the West or the animal blacks in the hot places.
"And this they did not accept, of course, and they fell upon him and he slew many, but they could only wound him. Pak kept life in him longer than it wanted to stay at great pain. And they believed they had failed against Pak, packed and took with them their copper pot and their weapons and left the forest and when they passed Pak's son, they bowed with respect for Pak had told them the young one coming up the road was Sinanju also.
"What was gained there in the forests near what would be called Shanghai was the knowledge of the ways the bloodsuckers moved, how they killed and how they drank blood and disguised themselves as smoke and they could not kill unless they were invited in. And there was a truce."
This Chiun told Remo and it was thought that sometime during the ages, the bloodsuckers had died off.
Pak kept his life long enough to tell his son what Chiun had told Remo. And he told him something else. "That the bloodsuckers had no fear of death."
"We could give them a hell of a fight," said Remo.
"What is this?" shrieked Chiun. "Have I spent my years making a ballfoot player, a banger of sticks? You are an assassin. You are not an entertainer. Close is the same as never, you white dense mud-thick pig mind."
"I'm sorry," said Remo.
"You should be. And now we face these bloodsuckers again. And they have ways to kill we may not yet know of."
"We'll do the best we can. We just won't invite them in. By the way, what happened to the emperor's governor? The one Pak was sent to rescue?"
Chiun shrugged. How should he know? "Who keeps track of Chinamen? They are so many."
Victoria Virginia Angus sat at the Honeywell computer console with the ITT extension phone stuck in its holder on the top of an IBM Selectric computer recorder.
Before her were two consoles of buttons. One transmitted and one received. The transmitter was composed of 12 square buttons, ten with numbers and letters, and two with signs. Each gave off a different musical note as you touched them. With practice, you could play the William Tell Overture on it.
The receiver was composed of several flat disks and a computer display screen tinged in green. The flat disks across the bottom read, STOP, PLAY, RECORD, REWIND, FAST FORWARD, LOCK, and HOLD. The display screen flashed READY in the upper left-hand corner. A small switch was flicked to ON.
Viki sat in a small room off the cafeteria in the computer section of Yale's Hancock College. She was wearing a red turtleneck sweater and green corduroys. She cracked her knuckles and pressed the RECORD and PLAY buttons on the Honeywell.
The READY-flashed off the screen and a RECORDING took its place.
Viki moved over to the IBM and punched out a seven-digit number to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Viki's left hand stabbed the LOCK and HOLD buttons on the Honeywell and waited.
The IBM clicked several times as the preprogramming code took effect. The receiving code located the sending computer's code, digested it, edited it, reshuffled it, organized it, and pinpointed it.
A 914 appeared in the center of the green Honeywell screen. Shortly thereafter a RYE, NEW YORK AND VICINITY appeared under the 914 area code.
Viki leaned over and switched the IBM to OFF. She then programmed a retrieval and eraser code into the Honeywell. She stood up and went to dinner.
She ordered a cold roast-beef sandwich on rye with both mustard and ketchup while thinking about the man Chiun called "Emperor." He was from Rye, New York.
Viki thought about her father's death and Remo and Chiun. Then she went home and packed her things.
Remo answered the door. Chiun was sitting in the center of their Fairfield, Connecticut, motel room fiddling with the parchment daytime drama as if nothing had happened that night.
Remo was waiting for room service to bring up some rice when the knock had come. There was no reason not to think that it was room service, since Remo had called 45 minutes ago and the kitchen always seemed to get the order wrong.
Either they cooked the rice with artificially preserved meat or they topped it with a sauce packed with monosodium glutamate or any number of other things that were poison to his system.
But now there was no smell of food or sound of wheels on a rolling cart, so Remo opened the door with his left hand, holding his cut hand behind him.
Viki Angus leaped into the room and threw her arms around him.
"Remo, Remo. Thank God," she cried, crushing her ample bosom, hardly held back behind her braless chambray shirt, upon him. She sank her head onto his shoulder and wracked the room with sobs.
Chiun watched, then began to scribble furiously on his parchment.
"Easy now," Remo said, moving Viki over to the bed and sitting her down. "What happened?"
Viki cried into her hands a bit more, then looked up toward the door.
"I was home alone. And I was so frightened, and then I looked out the window and I thought I saw, I thought I saw… it was awful." She leaped up and grabbed Remo again. "I don't even want to think about it."
"Easy," Remo repeated as she squirmed across his body again, rubbing her thigh across his front. "What was it? You've got to tell us if you want us to help."