Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

"Meaning what?"

Jilda bit her lip. "It will only be necessary to spend a few years with Griffith. After he is grown, 1 will return to Lakluun. Where I belong."

"Hey," Remo said gently. "Is that what's bothering you?" He stroked her hair. "You don't have to change your life for me. I love you, funnyface, remember?" He

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tweaked her nose. Her green eyes changed to blue and then gray and back to green again, like the shifting hues of an ocean. "God, I'll never get used to those," he said.

"Remo ..."

"Shhh. Listen to me. If you've got to stay in Wales, I'll stay with you. We'll raise Griffith together. No problem. I've always wanted a kid, anyway."

His thoughts ran to their life together in the green hills of Emrys's valley. The three of them in the Forest Primeval. Me Tarzan, you Jilda. His face flushed, and his hands grew cold. He liked the feeling. He liked it very much. "I'll build you a nice little house," he said eagerly. "With a picket fence around it. No fair spearing any animals on the fence. And we'll plant some flowers around the front, just like in the movies."

"Oh, Remo-"

"And when Griffith's good and sick of us telling him how to run his life, we'll take off in one of your crazy canoes and row ourselves to Viking Land, and swim in ice water and swill mead with the boys-''

"Stop!" She didn't bother to check her tears now.

"I don't understand," Remo said quietly. "I'm asking you to marry me." He stared at her in bewilderment. "Don't you ... I mean, I thought you wanted ..."

"Above all things, I wish to spend my life with you. But the sacrifice ... the sacrifice will be too great."

"There wouldn't have to be any sacrifice, I'm telling you."

"Not for me, Remo. For you."

"For me? You've got to be kidding. I've spent my whole life in orphanages and army barracks and motel rooms. A cottage in Wales'11 seem like a castle as far as I'm concerned."

"It is not the place," she said. "What you would be

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giving up is something inside you, something so rare that the sages among your people have waited for millennia to see it." She took Remo's hand in hers. "You listened to the words of H'si T'ang. You have a great destiny before you. You cannot abandon that for something as selfish, as small as-"

"Small?" Remo shouted, rising to his feet. "Smalll Is that all you think of us?" He picked up a rock and threw it so hard that it whistled. "Damn it, I don't want a 'great destiny.' 1 want to be happy, and for the first time in my life, I am. 1 want this. I want ..." His voice cracked. "You."

It was a long time before Jilda spoke. "That is why I must leave you," she said quietly.

The song of the tree frogs, combined with Chiun's distant melody, seemed to fill the world.

"Whatl" he whispered.

She didn't answer. She gathered her things and dressed quickly, pretending not to see Remo standing beneath the plum tree. Her vision blurred. "Good-bye," she said.

He raced to stop her. "Tell me you don't love me."

"Remo-"

He shook her. "You can't believe in that prophecy crap any more than I do. I'll let you go if you want to go, but not because of any bullshit legend. Just tell me you don't want me, and I'll leave you alone. That's all I'll accept. Otherwise, you're stuck with me. For better or worse."

"Remo, I can't. It's not fair of you."

"Tell me! Do you love me or not?"

The moon shifted. Her face, more beautiful than Remo had ever seen it, was bathed in pearlescent light.

"Good," Remo said. "For a minute, I thought-"

"I don't love you." She pulled away from him abruptly. Remo exhaled as if someone had kicked him in the belly.

She backed away into the shadows. "I don't love you.

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Now go to your own world, your own life, for everyone's sake. Go, be what you were meant to be."

She turned and ran. Remo watched her, too stunned to move. A sudden gust of wind blew a shower of blossoms from the plurn tree to the ground. In a moment she was gone.

Chapter Thirty-One

Smith had finished scanning the Du Lac College computer tapes, and he finally went home for dinner. He had been gone for two weeks.

Irma was cooking.

"Hello, dear," she said, without turning from the stove.

"Hello, Irma," he said and gave her a peck on the cheek. She did not ask where he had been or what he had been doing. He was home, safely, and that was all that counted.

Dinner was burned pot roast and potatoes, cooked rock-hard in the center.

Dessert was rice pudding. Smith had never liked rice pudding, but he had been trained to finish what was put in front of him, and so Irma never knew. Thirty years ago, his mother had told Irma that he didn't like rice pudding.

Irma kept serving it. She was sure it was his mother's rice pudding that Harold Smith didn't like.

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Chapter Thirty-Two

Remo never left his cabin on the long submarine ride back to the United States. It was not until Chiun, still wearing the white robes of mourning, told him that it was time to leave that Remo even moved from his bunk.

It was dark outside when the two of them walked down the dock toward a waiting automobile.

"I'll walk," Remo said.

Chiun nodded, dismissing the car.

"You don't have to come with me."

"You have been alone long enough," the old man said. His white robes billowed in the summer breeze. Remo felt a pang of conscience.

"I'm sorry about H'si Tang," he said.

"My father lived a full life, and his spirit continues through the boy. I cannot ask for more."

The moon was bright, and the sky was ablaze with stars. Remo kept his head down. He never wanted to look at stars again.

After a long silence, Chiun spoke softly. "I have been giving thought to many things," he said. "To legends and

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traditions and the continuity of life. It is good that the Master's Trial has been abolished."

Remo spat.

"Was it so distasteful to you? Did you learn nothing from it?"

"Oh, I learned, all right," Remo said bitterly. "I learned a whole lot. "

"Such as?"

"Such as I should have stuck to bashing heads for Smitty. That's about all I'm good for."

"I see," Chiun said. "Then you found nothing of value in Ancion's sense of fairness? Or Kiree's humility? Or Emrys's courage?"

Remo looked over to him. "Yeah, I guess so. They were good. Better than me, I think, in a lot of ways."

"And the Dutchman?"

Remo hung his head. "He was a lot better."

"Was he?"

Remo knew what he meant. "Little Father, is there such a thing as ... well, opposite personalities in people? I mean, different parts of the same person, only in two different bodies?"

"The principle of yin and yang holds true for all things."

"But . . ."

"He is part of you," Chiun said.

Remo made a noise. "That stuff doesn't make any sense to me."

"If the force of the universe were so simple as to be understandable to all, life would be a very uninteresting experience."

"It's been too interesting for my taste. Anyway, he's gone now. I can live with him as long as he stays away from me."

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Chiun shrugged. "Perhaps he will, perhaps not. If he ever returns, it will be different because now you know who you are. And Jilda?"

"What about her?" He worked to keep his voice natural.

"Have you learned from her as well?"

"What's anybody learn from women? They come and they go. They're all the same in the dark."

"That is unworthy of you," Chiun snapped. "Jilda was the equal of any man in the Master's Trial."

"She was all right," Remo said dismissively. "She had weird eyes."

"She possessed great courage. Greater than you know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Remo said angrily. "That she doesn't lead a guy on? Well, that's true. Jilda and her trusty ax, hacking her way to independence. She can write a book. The One-Minute Way to Dump on Men. The women's libbers would love her."