Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

“I am leaving,” said Wilbur.

Wilbur found out that Mrs. Dolomo did not believe in arguments. She believed in radiators. Two large strong men with hands like steel vises tied Wilbur to a radiator. Even though the day was warm, there was still steam in the system. It was used to heat water.

Wilbur, understanding what the drug might mean in the wrong hands, held out until he was crying in pain. And then, mentally begging forgiveness, he told the Dolomos about the mind drug that could wipe out memory.

But he warned them how dangerous it was. He begged them not to use it, even as Dr. Dolomo talked of using Level Two people as guinea pigs, of selling small doses of it, or better yet, using it as a teaching booster at the first level. The possibilities were endless: give a group dose to the entire second level and then, as the dose wore off, make the members believe Poweressence had returned their memory. Of course, they would have to give the Toledo franchise its cut. Or better yet, a dose of the drug. They would forget they owned a piece of the potion.

“I was thinking about getting it into the food of the witnesses against us,” said Dr. Dolomo. He lit the end of the cigar.

“The witnesses against you, Rubin,” said Beatrice Dolomo.

“I am your husband.”

“Please,” cried Wilbur.

“What do we do with him?” asked Dolomo.

“I am not going to have someone with an assault charge in his pocket against me running around the streets,” huffed Beatrice.

“I told you, kid,” said Dr. Dolomo, shrugging.

“Please,” sobbed Wilbur. “Please let me up.”

The woman nodded for him to be untied.

“We don't have to kill him,” said Dolomo. “He already told us everything it did. Give him a good swallow like the Indians used. He'll forget everything.”

“No,” said Wilbur.

“Young man,” said Beatrice Dolomo. “Do you know how alligators eat their dinner? Well, either you take a swig out of that vial you just showed us, or you will become very familiar with the dental pattern of the American alligator. They rip their food rather than chew it, you know. Thrash it about, so to speak. Not much of a choice, is it, dear?”

Wilbur looked at the brown liquid. He wondered what he would feel like not remembering anything, not remembering who he was, who his parents were, or how he lived, and he understood in that last mature moment of his life what the Indians meant by a punishment. When he swallowed the little vial, he said good-bye to himself.

The liquid was surprisingly sweet and pleasant. Wilbur thought that he would make a mental note of how long it took before the potion took hold and what the last moments of memory would be like.

He did not harbor this thought long. He was standing in a room with people looking at him and had something sweet in his mouth. He did not know whether they were kind people or bad people. He did not know he was in California. He knew the sun was shining and someone, some nice person, was telling him they were going to fix the boo-boo on his backside. He had been burned. But Wilbur Smot did not quite understand those words. He did not know what burn was. He did not know what boo-boo was.

He was on the floor, because he had not yet learned to walk.

His name was Remo and he was learning again. But it seemed slower this time, the wall did not seem as exciting this time. His body did not seem as alive this time.

The beach sands blew on the stone walk around the luxury high-rise building, collecting around bushes and posts and his bare ankles. Behind him, the sun rose red over the dark Atlantic. Miami Beach was quiet but for the distant scratching of rats in the garbage cans. He felt the salt sea air on his skin, moist and warm and fertile as the things of the sea. His lips tasted faintly of salt and white brick wall loomed up above him, straight up above him fifty stories into the last of the night sky.

It had been so easy for so long, and now he was doing it again. The first time, so many years before, he had started at the top and descended. But that was a test of fear, that was a test of controlling the one thing that stopped the body from moving at its optimum.

He touched his open palm to the brick and felt the mortar joints, concrete crumbling under his fingerpads. His body moved into the wall so that there was a true pressure against it, from his spine, from his breathing, from the human form that so rarely in all history was used to its full. His toes felt the moisture on the brick, and set themselves ever so precisely to balance his body against the wall with an even force. And then fingerpads against mortar, toes against brick, the body moved upward into the building, so that Remo could feel with his cheek the very vibrations of the foundation sunk into the supporting rock of Miami Beach.

The brick brushed the cheek, and the hands, as though swimming, pressed down against the wall as his toes pushed upward. And the trunk rose, smooth as a yawn, hands up and down, feet together, toes pushing down, hands up, toes down, hands down, toes up, faster and faster until the yawn became a rapid whisper up the walls. As he moved past windows and ceilings, as the brick went by and the roof came down to the rising figure, it was all the same again. Smooth again. Perfect again. As he had been told it would be.

If someone had been watching he would have seen a man swim up a wall. That was how it would have seemed. But the miraculous thing about it would have been that it would not have seemed miraculous at all, because the way this man moved his body was in unity with all living things. Someone seeing it would have seen the most natural thing in the world.

“Not jerky,” came the high-pitched voice from the roof. Remo topped like a diver at the apex of his jump, and landed on the roof. He was thin but with thick wrists. He had dark eyes and high cheekbones and thin lips. He wore dark slacks and a dark shirt.

“Maybe,” he said, “I am feeling at one with myself again.”

“That is not the one to be at one with, yourself. I am the one to be at one with. That's why you got into trouble. That's why we are relearning. What will happen when I am not here anymore?”

“I'll probably have a moment's peace, Little Father,” said Remo.

“Death is the most relaxing experience of all,” came the squeaky voice from the shadows. The breeze on the roof rustled the dark robes of the old man who had just spoken. The wisps of hair around his ears floated like pennants, but the body was centered with more firmness than the very foundation of the building. He raised a single finger, its nail like a curving quill, long and smooth. “Death,” said Chiun, “is the easiest thing of all.”

“Well then, Little Father,” Remo said. “It's my death.”

“No,” said Chiun. “Not anymore. You do not have a right to die, any more than I did before I found a Master to take my place, a Master of Sinanju.”

Remo did not answer. He knew the old man was right. He had endangered himself by exposing his highly sensitive nervous system to radioactive materials. Normally he would have noticed, sensed it. But Remo had been desensitized by anger. Chiun had declared that the substance was cursed, and Remo did not believe in curses, especially not the curses recorded in the histories of the House of Sinanju. Therefore he did not listen to his body, which would have warned him about the radioactivity. After he had been weakened by it, he could sense it even less.

Chiun had nursed him back to health, but had never let him forget that the histories of Sinanju would have saved him. Remo's problems with the histories of Sinanju began with Chiun, because he read what Chiun wrote, and he knew the reports were highly shaded. For one, Chiun avoided mentioning that he had trained not only the first nonresident of the village of Sinanju, but also the first non-Korean to be a Master, and the first non-Oriental to boot. A white man.