Warren Murphy: Killer Chromosomes

Nor did she put it out like a civilized person, just squashing the end so later Remo could salvage the clincher and smoke what was left. No, she jabbed cigarettes out with as much power as if she were throwing darts and usually managed to bust them in at least two places. There was no way to smoke the butts later on. She also kept throwing away his matches which he had now taken to hiding under his mattress.

The food was nothing to speak of either. Sheila refused to allow the stove to be used. She would sit, eating raw meat in her bare hands, blood running down the sides of her mouth. When she was done she would lick her red fingers and eye Remo as if he were 165 pounds of ambulatory filet mignon.

Remo subsisted on package food and cake. He began to remember the good old days when the paddies were filled with rice for the world and the oceans were abundant and swollen with fish. But he did not miss rice and fish all that much.

He wondered occasionally about Chiun and whether he would ever see him again. Probably Chiun already had forgotten about him and was looking for somebody else to train. Well, Remo could live with that. He had had enough of training and bitching. He had had enough too of Smith and all those hours of work trying to do everything and be every place. Enough. Enough. Enough.

Remo went out to the porch surrounding the white farmhouse. There was a three-foot-high wooden railing along the front. Remo leaned on it with his hands. He remembered how Chiun trained him by making him run along narrow railings to improve his balance. Remo had run across cables on the Golden Gate Bridge, run along the top of deck railings on ocean liners in choppy seas. A porch railing? A breeze. Remo removed his hands from the railing and hopped into the air. As his feet came down on the railing, his right foot slipped. He hit his knee a sharp crack on the way down.

He was puzzled at that. He didn't usually slip. He jumped up again. This time he made it, but teetered, rocking back and forth, trying not to fall off. He extended his arms far out to the sides, curled his body like a ball and swayed back and forth, trying to stay on the railing.

"You really are a mess."

When Sheila's voice came from behind, Remo lost his concentration. Before tumbling forward into a bush, he pushed himself backward and jumped heavily to the aged, wooden floor of the porch.

"What do you mean by that?" Remo asked as he turned. Sheila stood in the doorway, naked as usual. It made it easier for them to couple at random moments.

"When I first ran into you, you were something exceptional. That's why you're here." she said. "And now? Just another young, out of shape nothing. With enough years, you might grow up to be an old, out-of-shape nothing."

She did not try to mask the contempt she felt for him.

"Wait a minute. What do you mean that's why I'm here?" Remo asked.

She smiled. "That's another thing. Your brain doesn't work either. If you can't figure it out, don't expect me to tell you. Come in and eat your breakfast. You need your strength."

"I'm tired of cereal and Twinkies," Remo said.

"Suits me. Eat grass."

Sheila walked back inside the house. When she and Remo first arrived, she watched him at all times to prevent his escaping. If he was not being watched, he was kept locked up. But now she ignored him, as if she had gauged his physical condition and decided there was no way he would be able to escape.

He wondered if he had really fallen that far. That a woman treated him with physical contempt? What good was Sinanju if it deserted you that quickly?

Or had he deserted it?

He leaned back against the railing and again felt the wood under his fingertips. Only a few weeks ago, he could have told in the dark what kind of wood it was, how dry, how old, how slippery it might be when wet and exactly what force might be needed to break it.

But now it was just a piece of wood, senseless, dead wood. It told him no story.

He had turned his back on Sinanju so it had turned its back on him. He had stopped the training, forgotten how to breathe, forgotten how to make his body something different from other men's bodies.

He had turned his back on other things too. What of Chiun who had for years been more father than father could be? Who had taught him out of love the wisdom of centuries of Sinanju? What of Smith and the mind-breaking tensions he worked under? His need to solve the tiger people problem in Boston? The pressure from the President?

Remo realized he had walked away from his only family, his only friends. In doing that he had walked away from the art of Sinanju which had made him, for better or for worse, what he was.

Remo paused and looked around the porch. He took a deep breath. The air was fresh and clean. He breathed again, reaching down deep, filling his lungs, then pulling the breath all the way into the pit of his groin as he had learned day after day, month after month, year after year.

Like a sluice gate being opened in flood time, the air poured through and triggered memories of what he once had been. He could taste the air as well as smell it. There was the sweetness of sugar and the rotten smell of decaying vegetation. There was humidity in the breath. He could smell the sea nearby, almost taste the salt, and there was a breeze corning from over the mountains.

He breathed again and could smell the animals of the fields. He could smell the meat from Sheila's kitchen table, the rotten sweet, flesh smell of dead meat. He could smell the dryness of the boards under his feet. It was as if he had been dead and was alive again.

Remo laughed aloud as life poured in through his senses. Sinanju was an art of death but to its practitioners, it brought only life, life being lived to its fullest, every sense alive and vibrant with feeling and power.

Remo laughed again. The porch rocked with the sound. Laughter bounced off the front wall of the house.

He turned and leaped high into the air.

He came down lightly with both feet on the narrow wooden railing. He stood motionless, his body as firmly balanced as if he had been rooted in the wood.

With his eyes closed, he jumped in the air, spun and came down with both feet, one behind the other, facing in the opposite direction. He ran forward along the railing then back, keeping his eyes closed, sensing the thickness of the wood through the soles of his feet, letting the power of nature flow from the wood into his body.

And he laughed again. It was over.

Inside, Sheila Feinberg did not hear him. She had just finished her breakfast of raw, bloody beef liver. She sat at the table and threw it back up onto her plate.

She looked at her vomit and smiled. The part of her that was animal had been giving her signals for thirty-six hours. Now the part that was woman seemed to be giving a signal. If it was the signal she had been looking for, she would have no more use for Remo.

Except as a meal.

On the porch, Remo took the pack of cigarettes from his trouser pocket, crushed it in his hand, and threw it toward the field of cut cane. He had no more use for cigarettes.

But he kept the matches.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It wasn't so much that the lady bartender at the Three Musketeers was beautiful, which she was, but that she had not seemed impressed by Durwood Dawkins. His Cadillac hadn't impressed her, nor had the large wad of bills he usually carried. But, she seemed to be impressed by the fact that he was a jet pilot for hire. Maybe, possibly, would he take her for a ride someday?

"Sure," he said, "Any day or night." Then he impressed her some more by telling her how quickly they could get to so many different places. Why, just last week it had taken only three hours to fly a private party to the Dominican Republic. And what a strange party. A great-looking blonde in short shorts accompanied by a cage. The cage, he knew, had a man in it because he heard him yell when the cage was dropped from the plane's cargo door.