Warren Murphy: Return Engagement

"Well, steel is too heavy for some uses, and lighter metals, like aluminum for example, are too weak. They can't take the stress. If this man's process works as they say it does, I can see the day when they'll build bionic legs of titanium to help men like yourself to walk."

"I am intrigued. I must look into this. My doctors told me that there was no hope for me."

"There is always hope. You just have to hang around long enough for science to catch up to our problems."

"You are a great believer in hope, Dr. Smith."

Dr. Harry laughed. "I imagine so."

"Were you ever in Japan, Dr. Smith?" asked the patient.

"After the war, I came home. I haven't left Massachusetts since."

"I meant during the war. Were you there?"

"No,"

"Perhaps you do not remetnber?"

"I'm sure I would," Dr. Harry said absently, reading the sphygmomanometer. "Your blood pressure is high. Hmmm. it seems to be rising even as you speak. When did this trouble come on?"

"Forty years ago. In Japan."

"Forget Japan. I meant the nerve."

"It all started then." The steel claw whirred open like a venus flytrap preparing to catch a meal. "I have longed to meet you, Dr. Smith."

"Really?" said Dr. Harry Smith, taking his eyes off the claw with difficulty.

"Yes. Ever since that day in Japan, June 7, 1949." The man's voice had dropped to a growl, and Dr. Harry took an involuntary step back. The man's arm-his good one-shot out, catching his open wrist. The grip was firm.

"Excuse me," said Dr. Harry, wriggling free. But pulling free was a mistake, because with the touch of a lever, the grizzled old man sent the wheelchair surging forward. Dr. Harry felt something clamp onto his right thigh. He looked down.

It was the steel claw. It bit through the cloth of his smock, which was reddening. Had he spilled some mercurochrome? But of course, he had not, and that voice was growling close to his ear.

"You thought I was dead, Dr. Smith. Harold K. Smith. You thought you had killed me that day. You did kill my future. But you did not kill my spirit. I live. I lived for you. All these years for you. And this moment."

Dr. Harry groped for the man's wrist. Maybe if he snapped the connection at the wrist sheath. Maybe. But the claw dug deeper with that damnable whirring, and Dr. Harry slipped to his knees.

"Ilsa!"

Dr. Harry heard the throaty bark through ringing ears. The pain was intensifying.

The blond bounced in through the door.

"He's not dead yet," she said. Her voice was disappointed.

"I would not have called you if I did not need help," the old man snarled. "Hold him down."

Dr. Harry felt soft fingers clamp his rounded shoulders, keeping him down on both knees. He tried to fight, but could not. And then through the ringing in his ears, he heard the whirring of the steel claw as it found his throat. The last words he heard were the girl's.

"I hope this one doesn't wet all over me too."

Dr. Harry fell onto the legless lap of the man in the wheelchair and slid off, taking the thin red blanket with him. On the underside, the crooked black cross of the swastika blazed like a blackened ember in its white circle.

"Was it him?" Ilsa asked breathlessly.

"No, it was not him. I could tell the first time he spoke. It was not his voice."

"Then why did you kill him?"

"His name was Harold Smith. It was reason enough. Pick up the flag and let us depart."

"Are we going to Boston next? There must be a lot of Harold Smiths there."

"No. Boston must wait. This doctor told me something important. We must return home, immediately. I must speak with my doctor about an important new discovery in metals."

Chapter 6

The Master of Sinanju was unhappy.

Seated amid the opulence of the treasures of his ancestors, he hung his head low. He could not sleep. He lacked appetite-not that it mattered to the people of his village.

When Chiun had not joined the communal evening meal, no one had come to inquire of his health. No one had offered so much as a bowl of cold rice. Not Pullyang, the formerly faithful, nor Mah-Li, to whom he had bestowed a dowry of gold so that she could marry Remo-a dowry that had been the last shipment of gold from the mad non-emperor Harold Smith.

The Master of Sinanju picked up the goosequill that would inscribe this day's infamy in the personal daily records of Chiun, whom history-he hoped-would call Chiun the Great.

Dipping the quill into the black ink in a stone receptacle, Chiun began to transcribe, not for the first time, the story of how he had taken a white, a homeless unwanted white, and bestowed upon him the great art of Sinanju. He paused, pondering how best to describe Remo.

In past years, he had avoided the obvious; Remo the White. Too indelicate. Remo the Fair seemed a good compromise. But for this scroll, Chiun decided, he would be called Remo the Ingrate.

Chiun wrote "Remo the Ingrate" in the complicated ideographic language of his ancestors and, satisfied, wrote on.

He recorded how the village, dazzled by the coming of the ingrate, Remo, had turned against Chiun. Not in obvious ways, he hastened to scribble-for he did not wish his descendants to call him "Chiun, the Master who lost the respect of the village"-but in subtle ways, insidious ways. They paid attention to Remo. And in paying attention to him, there was less attention paid to the proper person. Chiun decided not to mention who the proper person might be. Better that future Masters learn to read between the lines, where truth usually lay.

Chiun wrote of his pride-a pride now sullied by ingratitude-in bringing the white to Sinanju. For this fair-skinned Korean had taken to Sinanju better than any pupil before him. He had grown through the phases of Sinanju, from the night of the salt to that glorious day when the spirit of Wang, greatest Master of Sinanju, had visited him. It had been only last year, but the boundless pride of it still filled Chiun's aged heart. Remo had seen the great Wang and was now a full Master of Sinanju. It was only meet that the villagers accord him due respect, despite his deficiencies of pigment. But even the great Wang would have been the first to say that in Remo's case, less is more.

"Less is more," cackled Chiun aloud. He had heard the phrase on an American TV commercial and liked it. In a few centuries, when America had gone the inevitable way of the Roman Empire and slipped into history, no one would know that the aphorism was not Chiun's own.

Remo, Chiun wrote, was the fulfillment of the greatest legend in the history of Sinanju. He was the night tiger who was white, but who in coming to Sinanju would be revealed as the incarnation of Shiva, the Destroyer. Chiun had known Remo was Shiva for many years. But there had never been proof other than the clues the legends had foretold.

But in the American city of Detroit, Chiun wrote on, a city so unhappy that on certain religious holidays the inhabitants attempted to burn it to the ground, Chiun had confronted, not Shiva the Destroyer, but Shiva Remo.

Remo had been injured in a fire. Chiun had pulled him from a tangle of wreckage. When Remo had come to life, he spoke not in Remo's voice. He said words that were not words Chiun had come to expect from his former pupil. They were cruel words. For Remo had not recognized Chiun. Not at all. Not even after all they had been through together.

Even now, months later, Chiun had difficulty suppressing the shock he had experienced seeing Remo under the spell of the Hindu God of Destruction. In one accident, all that Chiun had worked for, the training of a new Master, one who would one day return to Sinanju, marry, and raise yet another Master, had been dispelled like a fragile soap bubble.

Remo's spell had been temporary, but Chinn could not know how long it would be before Shiva repossessed Remo's mind once more. And so Chiun, to save the years of training he had poured into the ungrateful white, to ensure the continuation of his line, had contrived to break the bonds that tied Remo to his homeland. The nature of this subterfuge, Chiun wrote on the scroll, was not important except perhaps to note in passing its brilliance. After a pause, Chiun inserted the word "unsurpassed" before the word "brilliance." Some truths did not belong between the lines.