Warren Murphy: Profit Motive

Step five was the inside of the left knee. Or was it the right knee? Remo thought about it for a moment, as Reva's fingertips traced along his body, up and down his belly, up and down his legs. No, he was sure. It was the inside of the left knee. All the techniques were symmetrical. One knee, then the other knee. One armpit and then the other armpit. One ankle, then the other ankle. But they all started on the left side, the heart's side of the body. That allowed women to be lifted erotically and then, by switching to the right side, allowed them down gently until Remo moved into the next pair of steps. It treated a woman like a yo-yo, and that was one of the things Remo resented about it. He didn't like treating women like yo-yos. He had liked sex more when he wasn't so good at it, when the outcome was sometimes in doubt, when he could await an honest answer to the question: "Was it good for you too?" Now it was always good for them, and that had made it no good for Remo. Maybe he would give up sex, he thought, as he let his supposedly sleeping fingers walk around to the back of Reva's left knee. Celibacy. It might be the wave of the future. Until the future ran out because there were no more children to bring about the future.

Remo threw his left arm over Reva and brought his face close to hers and said softly, "Ohhh, Reva." The woman was shuddering in response to Remo's touches, but she said to him, "Just lie still. I'll take care of everything."

"It's been such a day," he whined. Women liked whiners in bed.

"I know. It must have been terrible for you, having to do that to your own friend."

"Awful." Remo wondered if Chiun was listening. He could not hear the faint snores from the next tent.

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Probably Chiun was listening. The old voyeur. It would serve him right. "Of course, he deserved to die," Remo said. "He was nasty and narrow-minded. He was never nice to me, and he ignored everything I had done for him. He carped. He was so old and decrepit that I had to help him around some. Without me, he would have been nothing."

Remo heard a faint gasp in the next tent. Good. That would teach Chiun to eavesdrop.

"I knew when I saw you that only you would be able to do away with, him. Ohhhh, yes, do that," Reva said.

"I am doing that," Remo said.

"But if you're so strong, what can do away with you?"

"Nothing, I guess," said Remo. He added brightly, "Except love and respect. I've never had much of either. I'm an orphan, you know." That was a good touch, he thought. Women always rationalized making love to a man if he had had a troubled youth. It brought out the motherly side in them, and it also made them feel as if they weren't making love just out of horniness but out of compassion and concern.

"Are you happy he's gone?" Remo asked as he began to work the insides of her thighs. Reva's body was trembling.

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

"And the bacterium's destroyed?"

"Yes," she said. "Oh, yes, yes, yes."

"But there's more of it, isn't there?" Remo asked.

"Yes. A lot more. A lot more. All on St. Maar-ten's."

"Who developed it?" Remo asked.

"My friend. Oh, dear. My friend. I never . . . ohhhh..."

"What's your friend's name?" Remo asked. He was working the inside of the thigh now. He thought it was step eight. But it might be nine. He hoped he hadn't lost count. He didn't want to start all over again. .

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"I don't know. I never met him. He's just my friend. Can't this wait? Please? Do what you're doing."

"If you don't talk to me now, I'll stop what I'm doing," Remo said. The woman was shivering uncontrollably, as if she were soaking wet, naked, in the middle of an ice storm.

"No, no, no, no."

" 'Cause if I stop, there'll be no more of this ... or this." That was nine and ten. Or was it ten and eleven?

"Oh, no, don't stop. I don't know. I only talk to him on the phone. He helped me build my companies. He gave us the formula for Polypussides and for the rapid-breeder bacteria."

"And he really wanted the world's oil supply destroyed?" Remo said.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes."

"Why?"

"He said there's a big profit in it."

"Why didn't you just give the bacteria to the sheik?"

"He wanted me to wait until you and the old man either killed each other or came to work for him," she said. Her breath was was coming quickly now.

"Why?"

"He said there might be more profit in you two," she said.

Reva grabbed Remo's body now and pulled him to her, and Remo coupled with her even as she was spasming, and she turned her face from him and chewed on her lips and threw the back of her hand across her mouth to stifle a small scream.

And Remo heard Chiun, finally, grumbling under his breath, but so softly that no one could hear it but Remo. "Disgusting," Chiun said. "Like dogs in the street."

And because he thought it might annoy Chiun, who deserved all the annoyance he could get, Remo joined with Reva, tried to join her happily, in open gladness, and tried to revel in making love to her body, the old-fashioned way, the way he did before he had been

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trained, and he whispered in her ear, "You're going to introduce me to your friend."

And Reva said, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

And later, while they rested, she said, "You really have no weaknesses, have you?"

"Nothing like if you cut my hair ot, I get weak or anything Hke that," Remo said.

**I want you to meet my friend," she said.

And Remo said, "I'm looking forward to it."

Sheik Fareem was sleeping. The death of the little Master had grieved him and so had his promise to the Master, before he was killed, not to take vengeance on the young American.

But his sleep was troubled. It was troubled with visions of the old Master and the young American battling. He dreamed that he saw the people of his tribe drowning in pools of oil, and the oil seemed to be not merely a liquid but a living, growing pool of evil that swallowed up all that it encountered.

In his sleep, he heard a voice. It spoke softly into his ear as if it were very close to him.

It said, "You are a good and wise ruler, but you are wrong."

Fareem groaned lightly in his sleep.

"Oil is not your enemy. Time is. Oil is not changing your people, but the onward march of time is. You can either teach your people to live with the oil, with the changes that time is bringing to their lives, or you can flee with them farther into the desert, to try to escape change. But there, you must know, that when you leave this world, there will be no one to teach them to Uve."

The sheik groaned again.

"You must use your wisdom to make your people wise," the voice said. "It is all a father can do, and you are the father of your people. You cannot give them of your wisdom; you must lead them to the edges of their own. For the world is changing and we ... you and I •. .'we must understand those changes."

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The sheik slowly felt himself lifting out of sleep, but from a distance, as if it did not belong to him, he heard a voice, his own voice, say, "Who are you?"

He tried to open his eyes, but it felt as if delicate fingertips were on them, holding them closed.

"I am the Master of Sinanju. I have been with you, and when you need me again, my house will be here to serve you."

"But, Master," the sheik heard himself say, "aren't you dead? Did you not fall in battle?"

And the voice answered, "The House of Sinanju never dies, never to those it has sworn to serve and protect. And now I go."

"Where do you go, Master?"

"I go to other places where I am needed. Remember, my friend—do not try to cloak your people in your wisdom because that powerful garment dies with you. Lead them to their own wisdom, and then they will be mighty and protected forever. Good-bye, my friend."