Warren Murphy - Skin Deep

Chiun smiled benignly. "Just do your best, sire. I can ask for no more. To give you strength, I will recite some of the more beautiful verses of Ung, penned by the Master Wang himself. Good-bye, Remo."

"Good-bye, Remo," Remo mimicked as Chiun's Korean singsong faded out to sea. "Ingrates!"

Chiun sniffed. "Ingrates. He dares to call me an ingrate. Did I not point out to him where he might find the colony of tubeworms?"

Smith grunted. He did not like Chiun's complaints. Sometimes the poems were all right. If only they weren't in Korean.

Remo waited until the canoe with the two men was well out to sea. He could hear Chiun's voice across the clear water. He was declaiming an Ung poem, and Remo remembered it. It was about a bee who sees a flower open. It took four hours to recite, and if Chiun was interrupted during it, he insisted upon starting over from the beginning.

High on a cliff, beside the crest of the waterfall, Reno saw Ana silhouetted against the twilight sky. She moved her arms over the back of her head, so that her long hair rose and fell in a sensuous cascade. Her breasts were high and firm, her legs slender and strong. She saw Remo and waved and smiled.

To hell with the tubeworms, Remo thought as he headed up the hill leading to the cliffs.

Tomorrow was another day.

the end