Warren Murphy: Look Into My Eyes

"Bring your great enemy before me and let me see a fight between you two. The kind of fight I would have seen if he didn't run from you back in Sornica. Okay? That kind of a fight. Could you give me that?"

"Great Wang, it shall be a fight to glorify you and Sinanju. It shall-"

"All right already," said the Great Wang, in the person of Vassily Rabinowitz. "Can we have it here right after you get the President?"

But the fight was not to be in the living room of the Great Wang on Fifth Avenue. In the elevator of the building, coming in as Chiun was going out, was his worst enemy.

He looked like Remo. He spoke like Remo, and that made it all the more onerous. Chiun felt a deadly hiss emerge from his throat. His entire body assumed its most acute form of power, as he had been trained since childhood. Total energy. Total concentration as the hands made wide circling arcs in the death challenge.

Anna Chutesov screamed and tried to press herself into the walls of the elevator. The light bulbs above them shattered from the force of a human being coming into its total power.

"Little father. Don't fight me. Don't fight me. I'm Remo," said Remo, even though he was not sure whether he was facing Chiun or Vassily Rabinowitz. Anna had warned him about that and he had practiced in his mind, going up against Chiun despite his own will. This was what he had to do. His mind had to conquer itself. It was like turning one's own intestines inside out.

And it was not working. Remo could not lift his hand against this man.

And then he knew his body would do it for him. The stroke was coming from Chiun. That perfect stroke of pure cleanliness made more powerful by its purity. He knew it and his little father knew it, as his little father had taught it so long ago, so often, over and over from those first days right after the breath training.

The stroke that Remo did not even think about making because it was more a part of him now than his most intimate ideas.

And the horrible thing about that stroke was never before in all his years had Remo in the training sessions been able to stop it. Chiun, by his own volition, had stopped himself. But this stroke was not going to stop until Remo was crushed by it, the one stroke made perfect by a lifetime of devotion. His body moved in what was the defense, trained into him over and over, and never before able to stop that blow. And the stroke went by him, deflected by the proper acceptance of it, fast enough and strong enough for the first time in Remo's life.

Remo had done it. He had transcended Chiun for the first time, and even as he drove into his beloved teacher's body with a stroke to destabilize but not harm Chiun, Remo understood why. It was the Great Wang's visit.

When Wang visited Remo it was at Remo's transition to his ultimate.

"You are at your peak," Wang had said.

When Wang had visited Chiun, Chiun was at his peak. And it was the law of the universe that that which was at its most powerful was beginning its decline. All these years Chiun had been declining, and now Remo had made that transformation to stand above him.

There was both sadness and relief as Remo laid the great Chiun, now stunned, in the corner of the elevator.

The lights came back on.

"What happened? The lights blinked off and now they're on. What happened to Chiun?" asked Anna.

"The greatest fight of my life," said Remo.

"But it happened so quickly. It was an instant," said Anna.

"What do you want, fifteen rounds of people punching at each other's bodies in padded gloves?"

"I wish I could have seen some of it, at least," said Anna.

"You wouldn't have been able to, even if the lights were on. Too fast for your eyes. But even if I slowed it down, you wouldn't know what was happening."

"That is Chiun," she said. "Unfortunately you have met the Chiun who is not the most Chiun. He's waiting for us somewhere in this building under the name of Vassily Rabinowitz. Good luck, Remo."

"Thanks, and when Chiun gathers himself together again, don't tell him he lost a fight, all right?"

"He'll remember, won't he?"

"I don't know what he'll remember," said Remo, and he took the elevator up to the floor where the big party was going on, and asked around for Vassily Rabinowitz.

Everyone knew Vassily. He was either a great guy or a person one should know. It was a room filled with people impressed by their own importance. The very fact of being with each other seemed to make these people turn on to themselves.

There were bankers and publishers and owners of networks. There were surgeons and scientists, and industrialists and politicians. There was the presidential cabinet. All the power brokers in America were here, and there was the only one person Remo cared much about and he was unconscious in an elevator. And another he cared about somewhat and that one's brains were fried. And the man who did it could do it to Remo.

Everyone knew Vassily but no one knew where he was. A television anchorwoman turned her charm on Remo. Remo turned it back to her.

"You don't have to be rude," she said.

"Yes I do," said Remo.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Another jerk in a roomful of jerks," said Remo. Suddenly in the vast length of the floor, there was silence. Someone had called this august assembly of personages "jerks."

A titter of laughter played through the crowd. Most of the important people dared not laugh lest someone think they were threatened.

"Jerks?" asked the anchorwoman. And she laughed quite loudly.

"Yeah. None of you or anything you do will be remembered a thousand years from now. Even your children, if they're twice as important as you are, won't be remembered. So who are you?"

"It's not a thousand years from now that matters, but now," said the woman.

"Now you always have," said Remo, and someone said that because he wore jeans and a T-shirt, he probably was never invited at all, and several of the many bodyguards were invited to throw Remo out, to loud applause.

They joined the art on the walls, some of them sticking, some of them not.

"Rabinowitz," bellowed Remo. "I want you. And I want you now."

The room was quiet. A door opened. The crowd parted.

A little man with sad eyes walked in quite confidently. Remo went for his head, but this time he did not harm Chiun. Chiun was more frail than he should have been. More worthy of love than usual.

"Are you all right, little father?" said Remo.

"Yes. But I'm your friend Vassily Rabinowitz and you do whatever I say."

"Good, Vassily. I'm glad to see you again. For a moment I thought you were Chiun."

"You're going to kill Chiun. He's no good."

Remo was nodding yes, when he thought of Chiun. All the being that was his said kill Chiun. Everything said kill Chiun. All breathing said kill Chiun. He would kill Chiun, except there was a thing coming up in his throat, and it was something far off in the cosmos that he was a part of. It required the answer "No." And the answer "No" came out of his mouth. No was the answer to that.

"I've got to have your total loyalty. You cannot resist. There is nothing left in you to resist," came the words, and even Remo's blood cried out: Kill Chiun.

Remo threw himself onto the floor and fought his blood. He fought his blood and his being and his knowledge and everything he felt and saw and understood. His hands and his heart would not lift against his little father, Master of Sinanju. If they reached for Chiun, Remo would crush them. If his legs carried him to Chiun, Remo would break them, and far off in a place without light, but of all light, Remo heard the word he needed to hear. It was the great answer to the greatest of all questions.

And the answer was "Yes." The Hebrews heard it in the words of Mount Sinai which said: "I Am Who Is." And the Christians heard it on the third day, when the answer for all eternity was a yes to life.