Warren Murphy: The Last Alchemist

"It's a simple one-piece move," said the producer, who knew his film was going to be lost; now all he wanted was to save the camera.

"I did that," said Remo. This time he slid harder. He slid in all directions. A flaky gray cloud appeared in his hands, along with the film that smoldered with a bitter smell of burning tires. The camera had disintegrated from the friction. The film had been set on fire. He gave it back to the producer.

"Any idiot could have opened the damn thing," said the producer.

"Wrong idiot," said Remo pleasantly. One of these days he was going to have to learn how to work gadgets. He jumped up on the truck. There were about twenty people in the crowd.

"Look. I want a favor. I want you to say this never happened. I have personal reasons. Any reporters, including these people here, come to you and ask you about this, just say the girl fell in on the shore and her mother picked her out."

"You don't want credit for it?" called out a man from the crowd.

"I want you to say it never happened. Say the camera crew is on coke or something."

"Anything," cried the mother. The crowd closed around her, pointing at the crew.

"I saw them sniffing," said a woman, "didn't you?"

"Absolutely," said another.

One man in the crowd very quietly slipped away. He was a grain inspector for the government. He worked for the Department of Agriculture. He filed his reports on a computer terminal in his office in nearby Kalkaska, Michigan. About twenty years before, he had gotten a directive. The government, concerned with price fixing, wanted him to file reports on anything unusual. The request was general, and he wasn't sure what they wanted, but they did want him not to talk about it. He knew a couple of other grain inspectors in the Kalkaska office had gotten the same request, knew it because they mentioned how unusual it was. He said nothing because he was under the impression he wasn't supposed to talk about it. Shortly thereafter the other men were talking about how the program had been dropped. Just like the government, not knowing what it was doing.

But it wasn't dropped for him, and he realized he had just passed a weeding-out process. Early on, he used to phone in his reports to a special number. They were interested mainly in criminal activities. He never knew what good it did, but a couple of times, prosecutors nailed the people he had suspected, never knowing it might have been him who turned them onto it. One time a gangland figure notorious for eliminating witnesses turned up crushed like a grape in a room that only had an entrance through the twentieth floor. No one could figure out how they got a machine into that room to do that sort of damage. But the gang that had been preying on grain dealers disappeared with him.

When computers came in he was given a computer access number special to him. And he would punch in his code, punch in his information. There were two strange things about this. One, they wanted information on anything strange or different nowadays, not just Agriculture departmental business, and two, he never got an answer back except to confirm that it was sent. Each month he got a check from his department mailed to his home, sort of a bonus, nothing exceptional, but he knew he was the only one getting it.

Now as he drove through the Michigan countryside and its spring-sodden fields, he wondered about that. Wondered if he shouldn't pass up the incident at the pond. It wasn't illegal except possibly for the assault on the television people, and that the local police could handle if they ever could get a witness against the assaulter.

What the man had done was strange. Was it the sort of thing they would be interested in? He wondered again as he sat down to his terminal. He decided to make it brief. He was almost embarrassed to even report it.

"Saw man on pond run across water. Fifty yards. Did it to save a kid, then asked everyone to say they didn't see it. Destroyed television camera. Man seemed to have incredible force. Thought it might be of interest. Sorry if it isn't. It wowed me."

And then he punched in his code sign-off.

And for the first time in twenty years, he got an answer that was more than just an acknowledgment of a received message.

"Ran on water? How far?"

The Agriculture inspector's fingers suddenly felt numb. He punched the keys, hit several wrong characters, and had to repunch. Finally he got out the message.

"Fifty yards."

"Describe man."

"Thin, sort of. Dark hair. High cheekbones. Wore light jacket and loafers. Didn't seem to mind the cold."

"Did he have thick wrists?"

"Affirmative. They were thick."

"Did the television cameras get pictures of him?"

"Yes."

"Where is the film? Who has it? Is it scheduled for this evening? Answer if you know. Do not attempt to find out."

"Film burned up. Crew assaulted by man."

"Are they dead? Witnesses?"

"Not dead. Man got up on truck and told everyone to deny what they saw. Everyone willing because man saved little girl. I think no one minded television crew getting punched out."

"Punched out? Explain."

"Cameraman put up a fight."

"You said no one dead?"

"Correct."

"And film destroyed?"

"Correct."

The grain inspector saw the sign-off on the screen, and never heard from whoever was at the other end again. He wasn't even sure what continent the other terminal was on.

At the other terminal, Harold W. Smith looked out of the one-way windows of Foicroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound and said one simple swear word. It had to do with human waste and began with an S. It referred to the antics of Remo. Remo was now performing in front of television cameras. He wondered whether he should even use him anymore. Unfortunately, he had to.

Chiun, Master of Sinanju, glory of the name of Sinanju, teacher of the youth from outside Sinanju named Remo, prepared to enter into the history of Sinanju the bald fact that Remo was white, possibly without even a trace of natural yellow blood. He did this in a hotel room with a scroll laid out before him.

The ugly gray light of the American city named Dearborn, in the province of Michigan, filled the room that was crowded with heavy American furniture. Big wood chunks supported heavy brocaded pillows. Chiun sat on his mat, an island of dignity surrounded by the accoutrements of the new world. The television set, the one magnificent thing in the cesspool of this culture, was off.

His topaz writing kimono was still. His delicate hand with the graceful long fingernails carefully dipped the quill into the dark inkbowl. He had been leading up to this moment for years, first hinting that Remo, who would be the next Master of Sinanju, had come from outside the village of Sinanju, then outside Korea itself, then even to the point of referring to where Remo was born as being beyond the Orient. Now he would say it: Chiun had given Sinanju, the sun source of all the martial arts, to a white. The House of Sinanju would one day be inherited by a white. He felt the ages of these greatest assassins looking down on him. The great Wang, who had done so much to elevate the Masters of Sinanju, taking them from positions of servitude in the courts of the Chinese dynasties to legendary status. Master Toksa, who had taught the lesson to the pharaohs. The Lesser Wang. And there was little Gi, who had determined that the reason Sinanju had unlocked the full power of the human animal was that it was the most perfect product of the most perfect race. Little Gi was never a great assassin, but he was the most loved historian of all the Masters of Sinanju. Little Gi looked down on Chiun the hardest. It was little Gi who once believed that power to be a great assassin was in the color of the skin.

It was Gi who had convinced Kublai Khan to rise above Mongol barbarism, to stop doing their own sloppy assassinations and to let professionals like Sinanju serve a great court.