"But we had to go find them, didn't we?" asked Jellicoe.
"You are correct. That only indicates, however, that they are not coming after me now," said Mr. Gordons.
"And from what I gathered, they don't want to come after you. At least not the old one who seems to get his way; he doesn't want to come after you at all, ever," said Jellicoe.
"Who gives a shit?" said Sergeant Pitulski.
"Will you shut up, you dummy?" said Jellicoe.
Mr. Gordons continued driving smoothly, apparently ignoring Pitulski.
"I too tend sixty-four percent positive, plus or minus eight percent, that the bearded one would avoid me. At least for now. And I too could avoid them."
"Then why are you, we, us, all of us trying to kill them?"
"Because it is optimum," said Mr. Gordons.
"I don't understand."
"If they are dead, my chances of survival improve. Therefore, I will kill them. In killing them, I will also become effective against anyone like them."
"All right, can I ask why? I mean, why do you want to become effective against them and people like them?"
"To maximize my survival."
"But there's got to be more of a reason. There's such a small chance you would ever meet people like them again. I mean, do you spend all your time just surviving?"
"Exactly," said Mr. Gordons.
"Doing nothing but surviving?"
"Surviving requires all my effort."
"How about love?" asked Jellicoe, desperately hoping to strike some emotion other than this computer-like insistence on only survival.
"Love has as many meanings as there are people." said Mr. Gordons. "It is not capable of programming," he added, and he turned up a narrow road that rose above Magen's Bay.
"There it is, Sergeant Pitulski," said Mr. Gordons as they stopped at a driveway which was cut into a clearing. In the center of the small clearing was a wooden house with a large hole in the front door where a doorknob might have been.
"Now this is how I want you to do it," said Mr. Gordons, as he strapped the flamethrower unit to Sergeant Pitulski's back and checked the nozzle end of the tube which fitted under his arm. "I don't want a direct spray that can be evaded. I want you to first set the far side of the house aflame, then move the flame around left in a circle that comes almost to your feet, and then keep going onward toward your right until the circle is closed. With the fire, you will make the flames fatter toward the house until we have a funeral fire."
Sergeant Pitulski said it wasn't the Marine way; Mr. Gordons said it was the way it would be done.
The first line of flame shot in an arch over the dry wooden house and the droplets caught and flared wherever they landed. In a surprisingly even circle, Sergeant Pitulski set the brush aflame and brought the circle to a close, but, as he did so, he lost the exact sighting of the house in the rising flame. He stepped back to higher ground and haphazardly filled in the center of the circle, but such was the dryness of the brush and wood of the house that the whole area went roaring up under the infusion of liquid flame. Sergeant Pitulski backed away from the roaring heat.
"Well, that's it," said Jellicoe, watching from the front seat as Mr. Gordons got back into the car.
"Invalid," said Mr. Gordons and started the car with a roar and spun it around and down the road. As Jellicoe looked back, he saw two figures, one in a barely smoking kimono and the other with what appeared to be a bandaged arm, flip Sergeant Pitulski into his own pyre. The fatty body made nary a pop on its way to crispness.
Mr. Gordons's driving amazed Jellicoe. He took corners at just the maximum possible speed, and soon he was on the open highway, but looking behind, Jellicoe could see that the young man with the damaged shoulder was not only keeping up with them, but was gaining on them, driving at a speed so incredible that he seemed to churn above the concrete road itself.
"On with your water gear, On with it. It's in the back seat," said Mr. Gordons. "It's your one chance for survival. Quickly." Jellicoe struggled with the suit as they speeded along the bumpy mountain road, but gave up and settled for the tanks and the mask and fins. Into the small gate at Magen's Bay Beach, Mr. Gordons spun the car, skidding to avoid a large beach house. There were shrieks from bathers. To avoid a tree, Mr. Gordons ran over a little toddler. Down the beach, he braked the car to a skidding, sandy stop.
"Out. The water is your only chance. Quickly, into it."
With his flippers on, Jellicoe could only penguin walk toward the water, but once in it, his flippers began to work, and he got his rubber mouthpiece set in his teeth and turned on the tank and blessedly moved along the sandy bottom.
Magen's Bay was not deep near the shore so Jellicoe swam directly out to sea. He was at home here in these clear waters, at home because what he feared was on land. And he thought that perhaps when man first left the sea, crawled up in that primitive state onto land, he had done so to escape what might be in the sea.
At forty feet deep, his back flipper caught in something and he turned to dislodge it. When he did, he saw the young man with the injured shoulder. His face was very calm.
In the water, Jellicoe worked on one chance, holding the man down without air. Surprisingly, the man did not resist. Jellicoe put his arms around the neck and the man was motionless, this man whose only name Jellicoe knew was Remo.
Jellicoe saw no bubbles and the man did not resist. So Jellicoe held for ten minutes, then released, and rose toward the glittering surface, having earned, he thought, his hundred thousand dollars.
But he stopped short of the light above him. Something was tugging at his flippers. It was Remo. And he tugged downward and when his face was level with Jellicoe's face mask, he smiled and removed the mouthpiece connected to the air from the tanks behind the diver. And as water flooded Jellicoe's lungs, he had a strange thought: he had never had a chance to get rid of the metal spur. And then there was something even more strange. Under water, he thought he heard this Remo say something, something that sounded like:
"That's the biz, sweetheart."
On a cliff over Magen's Bay, Mr. Gordons had stopped to watch the combat beneath clear water.
"That makes negative for water as well as fire as well as metal," he said softly to himself. "If only I were more creative. This new program I acquired at O'Hare Airport, it can be improved. But how?"
He heard something move in the brush fifty yards away and although he could not see it, he could track its direction. It moved faster than men could run and when it emerged from the bushes it stopped. In robes singed dark at the edges was the Oriental.
"Mr. Gordons, why do you persist?" asked Chiun. "What endeavors do we, my son and I, endanger of yours? Tell us so we may avoid them."
"Your existence is what endangers me."
"How? We seek not to assault you."
"So you say."
"So I show. I keep my distance. Without your lackeys near you, I still keep my distance."
"Would you move against me? Attack," said Mr. Gordons.
"No," said the Master of Sinanju. "You attack me, if you dare."
"I have already. With those lackeys."
"Attack me with your person," defied Chiun.
"Are you a person?" asked Mr. Gordons.
"Yes. The most skilled of persons," said Chiun.