The lights came back on.
"What happened? The lights blinked off and now they're on. What happened to Chiun?" asked Anna.
"The greatest fight of my life," said Remo.
"But it happened so quickly. It was an instant," said Anna.
"What do you want, fifteen rounds of people punching at each other's bodies in padded gloves?"
"I wish I could have seen some of it, at least," said Anna.
"You wouldn't have been able to, even if the lights were on. Too fast for your eyes. But even if I slowed it down, you wouldn't know what was happening."
"That is Chiun," she said. "Unfortunately you have met the Chiun who is not the most Chiun. He's waiting for us somewhere in this building under the name of Vassily Rabinowitz. Good luck, Remo."
"Thanks, and when Chiun gathers himself together again, don't tell him he lost a fight, all right?"
"He'll remember, won't he?"
"I don't know what he'll remember," said Remo, and he took the elevator up to the floor where the big party was going on, and asked around for Vassily Rabinowitz.
Everyone knew Vassily. He was either a great guy or a person one should know. It was a room filled with people impressed by their own importance. The very fact of being with each other seemed to make these people turn on to themselves.
There were bankers and publishers and owners of networks. There were surgeons and scientists, and industrialists and politicians. There was the presidential cabinet. All the power brokers in America were here, and there was the only one person Remo cared much about and he was unconscious in an elevator. And another he cared about somewhat and that one's brains were fried. And the man who did it could do it to Remo.
Everyone knew Vassily but no one knew where he was. A television anchorwoman turned her charm on Remo. Remo turned it back to her.
"You don't have to be rude," she said.
"Yes I do," said Remo.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Another jerk in a roomful of jerks," said Remo. Suddenly in the vast length of the floor, there was silence. Someone had called this august assembly of personages "jerks."
A titter of laughter played through the crowd. Most of the important people dared not laugh lest someone think they were threatened.
"Jerks?" asked the anchorwoman. And she laughed quite loudly.
"Yeah. None of you or anything you do will be remembered a thousand years from now. Even your children, if they're twice as important as you are, won't be remembered. So who are you?"
"It's not a thousand years from now that matters, but now," said the woman.
"Now you always have," said Remo, and someone said that because he wore jeans and a T-shirt, he probably was never invited at all, and several of the many bodyguards were invited to throw Remo out, to loud applause.
They joined the art on the walls, some of them sticking, some of them not.
"Rabinowitz," bellowed Remo. "I want you. And I want you now."
The room was quiet. A door opened. The crowd parted.
A little man with sad eyes walked in quite confidently. Remo went for his head, but this time he did not harm Chiun. Chiun was more frail than he should have been. More worthy of love than usual.
"Are you all right, little father?" said Remo.
"Yes. But I'm your friend Vassily Rabinowitz and you do whatever I say."
"Good, Vassily. I'm glad to see you again. For a moment I thought you were Chiun."
"You're going to kill Chiun. He's no good."
Remo was nodding yes, when he thought of Chiun. All the being that was his said kill Chiun. Everything said kill Chiun. All breathing said kill Chiun. He would kill Chiun, except there was a thing coming up in his throat, and it was something far off in the cosmos that he was a part of. It required the answer "No." And the answer "No" came out of his mouth. No was the answer to that.
"I've got to have your total loyalty. You cannot resist. There is nothing left in you to resist," came the words, and even Remo's blood cried out: Kill Chiun.
Remo threw himself onto the floor and fought his blood. He fought his blood and his being and his knowledge and everything he felt and saw and understood. His hands and his heart would not lift against his little father, Master of Sinanju. If they reached for Chiun, Remo would crush them. If his legs carried him to Chiun, Remo would break them, and far off in a place without light, but of all light, Remo heard the word he needed to hear. It was the great answer to the greatest of all questions.
And the answer was "Yes." The Hebrews heard it in the words of Mount Sinai which said: "I Am Who Is." And the Christians heard it on the third day, when the answer for all eternity was a yes to life.
"Yes," was the answer to all that was. All that was good was yes. All being was the great yes of the universe. And Remo saw the Great Wang laughing at him, and in the cleanest strokes of the history of Sinanju, Remo did as his little father taught him, bringing the blow from the very breathing itself, and severed the head of the Great Wang laughing at him.
When Vassily Rabinowitz' head rolled on the ballroom floor people screamed in horror. Remo's eyes cleared. His body ached where he had hurled it down, shattering parquet flooring into splinters.
He had performed a perfect blow. There was not a drop of blood on his hand. It had been in and out of Rabinowitz' vertebrae at the precise speed to sever with both heat and force. In fact, it was only now that the heart muscle of the headless corpse on the floor finished its last pumping action, creating a dark red pool where the head containing the sad brown eyes had been.
"Who are you?" asked a stunned broadcaster.
Remo didn't answer questions. He went upstairs and following wire circuitry to its source found Smith behind a computer terminal.
Smith was tired and confused. "Remo. Where are we?"
"Fifth Avenue. Rabinowitz' duplex."
"Strange. Last thing I remember is preparing to kill him. What's this on the computer screen?" Smith shook his head. "Oh no. Have they gone off yet?"
"Have what gone off?" asked Remo.
"You would have known if they did. I hot-wired our whole nuclear-defense establishment. Has the President been here?"
"No. I turned him back," said Remo.
"Good. I see. Yes. Right. Let me close this down before we all go up. Where's Rabinowitz?"
"Part of him is in the ballroom and another part, I think, has rolled into another room. I'm not sure."
"Thank you. We needed you and you did your job. You can go now, Remo."