Warren Murphy: Last Rites

"Of my mother."

And Remo held his breath as he waited for a response.

Sunny Joe Roam lay his head back and coughed explosively. "What did you say your name was?"

"Remo."

"That much I remember from before."

"The nuns who raised me said the name on the basket was Remo Williams."

Sunny Joe Roam said nothing. Remo held his breath, waiting for the man's next words. They didn't come. Instead, Chiun said, "It is ready."

Remo watched as Chiun lifted up Sunny Joe Roam's head. With a start Remo saw his eyes were shut.

"He lives yet," Chiun assured him.

Remo subsided. Chiun held the steaming venom before Sunny Joe's nose and the open mouth. Sunny Joe recoiled, coughing. Chiun brought the brew close again. "This is to prepare you," he said.

When the viper wine had cooled, Chiun poured it down Sunny Joe's throat, stimulating his swallowing reflex with a thumb massage of the Adam's apple.

Sunny Joe looked older than Remo remembered. His tall, lean-limbed body seemed to have wasted away in places.

When the cup was empty, Remo eased the head back onto the low hump of sandstone that served as a pillow. Sunny Joe's eyes were completely closed now.

"What do you think, Little Father?" Remo asked in a shrunken voice.

"I am not your father," Chiun said sternly. Then, after a moment and in a softer tone, he added, "We will know by dawn."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"If we had a dragon bone, we could make dragonbone soup."

A strange expression crossed Remo's face. "Yong gave me a dragon bone."

"What did you do with it?"

"I put it in my pocket. But it was only a dream." The strange expression on Remo's face got stranger as his hand came out of one pocket clutching a fragment of bone.

"Did you plant this on me?" Remo demanded of Chiun.

Ignoring him, the Master of Sinanju began to scrape the bone into meal in the sandstone cup.

"I don't know if he heard me," Remo said, voice cracking.

"He heard you."

"No. I don't think he heard me say my name. I don't think he knows who I am."

"He knows. All fathers know."

The last of the bone lay in the cup. Chiun climbed to his feet. Padding over to the mummy encased in yellow silk, he stood looking down upon it. "I bring greetings from the House of Sinanju, O ancestor."

Remo joined him. "That's Kojong, isn't it?"

"Let us be certain." And from his sleeve, the Master of Sinanju drew his tubular gong. He tapped it once. The high note filled the cave. And from the mummy came an answering note.

Chiun silenced his gong. But the mummy continued to ring.

Remo looked down. At its bony feet, covered in dust, a gong identical to Chiun's reposed.

"Yes," Chiun intoned, his voice filled with emotion. "This is Kojong the Lost."

"He looks a lot like you," Remo said softly.

"I have never told you the story of Kojing and Kojong, Remo."

"No. But Mah-Li told me. Years ago. Master Nonja had a wife who bore him identical twins. Because the eldest son was always selected to be trained in Sinanju, she knew one of the boys would have to be drowned in the bay. Otherwise, there could be a succession problem."

"In those days," said Chiun, his voice dropping into the low cadences he used when speaking of his village, "times were poor and the babies were sent home to the sea every few years. So the wife of Nonja, who bore him the twins, Kojing and Kojong, hid one of the babies from the sight of their father. Since Nonja was old and his eyes were failing, this was possible. As the boys grew, Kojing entered training. But the canny mother switched the boys every other day, and both received training.

"When at last Nonja died, two Masters stood ready to become Reigning Master. When they presented themselves to the village, none knew what to do. Should Kojing become Master. Or Kojong?

"In the end Kojong announced that he would seek another land where there would be no question of who was Reigning Master. He disappeared from the village, saying that should the House ever reach a time when there was no succeeding Master, the villagers should seek the sons of Kojong and pick of them the one most worthy."

Chiun's hazel eyes shifted from the dead face of Kojing, so much like his own, and seized Remo's. "You, Remo Williams."

"What?"

"I know this man's story. He is the last Sunny Joe. For he is a descendant of Kojong, whom he calls Ko Jong Oh. The eldest son of this tribe is called Sunny Joe after the name of the Great Spirit Magician Sun On Jo-He Who Breathes the Sun."

"My mother said my people were the people of the Sun. Those were her exact words."

"This man is your father, just as you are the descendant of Kojong."

"He-he say why he left me on the orphanage doorstep"

"No, I did not speak of you to him." "Then -then maybe I'll never know..."

"At dawn you will know or you will not. But in the meantime, there is something you must do."

"What's that?"

"Your last athloi. "

"I thought I was through. I did my twelve."

"No. There is still what the Greeks in their legends called cleaning Augean Stables. For the Greeks miscounted."

"It can wait."

"No. It cannot. This man is dying, as are the others of his tribe-your tribe, Remo Williams-from the mouse disease that is well-known in my land. You must comb the desert for mice and their droppings. Only by ridding the land of mice can this plague be arrested."

"I want to be with him. In case-in case he dies."

"I have promised you that I would take you to your father if you completed the Rite of Attainment. I have kept my part of the bargain. Now you must keep yours."

"I can't go now," Remo protested.

"You will if you are your father's son."

Remo looked to Sunny Joe Roam and back to the Master of Sinanju. Tears started in his eyes. "You can't make me do this."

Chiun indicated the unconscious man. "With his dying breath, he would ask you to save his people. Your people. You know this."

"Okay. But he'd better be alive when I get back."

"I make no promises," Chiun intoned.

"One more thing. If he comes to, ask him why he abandoned me."

"Are you certain you wish to know this?"

"Yeah. I gotta know."

Chiun nodded silently. He handed Remo the tubular gong of Kojong. "This will help you in your athloi." And taking the gong, Remo went out into the desert night, his eyes hot and wet.

REMO MOUNTED THE HORSE, Sanshin, lashing it into action. As he rode, he struck the gong. It rang angrily. Mice jumped out of their desert burrows. The gong's extended note seemed to send them fleeing.

Soon Remo was driving them before him. They were everywhere.

Stripping Sanshin of his saddlebags, Remo used them to catch the rodents. He tore across the desert with his thoughts racing ahead of him like uncatchable ghosts.

He couldn't bring himself to kill. They were only mice. So he carried them to the jeep and locked them inside. Soon they filled the back and front seats, sniffing and clawing at the windows, trying to escape.

When he had cleared the surrounding desert, he entered the deserted hogans he found here and there, driving the mice out with the gong and cleaning the interior with brittle-bush whisks.

In the deepest part of the night, Remo came across a solitary wind-scoured headstone.

It was a simple slab. It stood alone in the desert beside a eroded hump of red sandstone that lay at the end of the depressed crust of sand.

There was a name on the stone. No date, just a name. No stonecutter had carved the name. The letters were too irregular, but they had been carved deep and with great force.

The name was Dawn Starr Roam.

Remo knew instinctively it was the name of his mother.

On that spot, a thousand emotions both cold and hot running through his bones, he broke down and wept bitterly angry tears over what he had never known and only now truly missed.