"Must you always argue with me?" Chiun said, still applauding vigorously.
Dutifully, Remo put his hands together, clapping softly. He looked around the small platform. Beyond the sheik was Reva Bleem, still wearing a long desert robe. Next to her was a pudgy young Arab with beard and mustache, who looked as if running him through a ringer would produce enough oil to light Tacoma for a week. Prince Abdul. The sheik had introduced his son to Remo and Chiun when they arrived at the platform for the Arabian martial arts display, and the prince had acknowledged the introductions by looking away from them and walking to his seat.
The sheik's wish for an Arab soldier, Remo thought. Too bad. Prince Abdul looked as if he would be more at home at the baccarat table in the MGM Grand than on a horse.
Standing behind the sheik, leaning over, whispering in his ear, was Ganulle, his advisor. He was a rat-faced man with a long, pointed nose that he kept aimed in Remo's direction.
Suddenly, over a large sand dune, came a dozen men on horseback, and Ganulle leaned back from the sheik as the ruler concentrated on the riders. They wore the red and brown robes that signified they were of the Hamidi tribe. Shouting war chants as they rode, waving
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their swords over their head, they came down the side of the dune, their Arabian stallions plunging forward, not leaning back on the hills the way American cow ponies would, but using the hills to create even greater speed and forward momentum. The entire village of 500 people cheered their arrival, and their full-throated cheers overwhelmed the war cries of the horsemen. As they reached the flat table of desert in front of the reviewing stand, half the soldiers freed their feet from their stirrups, then rose up and stood on the horses' saddles, seemingly oblivious to the need to balance themselves, their swords still flashing hi the sun as they swung them over their heads. The other six riders released one foot from their stirrups, then hooked their free legs around their saddle horns. Then they fell backward until they were riding upside down, their heads dangerously close to the flashing hooves of the giant stallions. Easily, they transferred their swords to their left hands and kept swinging and slashing at air, eighteen inches above the ground.
A great maneuver if they were fighting Munchkins, Remo thought to himself.
The soldiers standing on the saddles jumped into the air and came back down in a seated position on the horses' rumps, behind the saddles, while the other horsemen executed a tricky maneuver by passing under the bellies of the horses and coming up standing in a single stirrup on the far side of the stallions.
All twelve reached the far end of the level clearing. At full speed, the horses turned, and the men came riding back, side by side, two by two. In each pair of horses galloping shoulder to shoulder, the two riders moved up out of their stirrups and switched from one horse to the other. Then they turned neatly in their saddles, and as the horses galloped up over the dune and out of sight, the twelve horsemen were facing backward in their saddles, waving their swords over their heads in a farewell salute.
The sheik leaned toward Remo.
"Do you ride?" he asked.
"No. But I can."
"Like that?" asked the sheik.
"Only with practice," Remo said. "They're good."
Sheik Fareem nodded. "Once all our men could ride that way. They were feared from Persia to Libya. But now, no more. There are very few left." Remo heard the tone of regret and sorrow in his voice, and he found himself feeling a tinge of pity for the sheik. The Arab's world was vanishing, swallowed up by the twentieth century, and he didn't like it, and Remo understood how he felt. Fareem's world might be duty and barren and uncomfortable, but it was his. It was the devil he knew, and he preferred it to the devil he didn't know. That was his right.
But he was wrong in trying to impose his devil on everybody else in the world. Fareem could choose to live out here in this sandbox forever, Remo thought, but he had no right to try to make everyone else's world into a sandbox. And that was why Remo would find that rapid-breeder bacterium when it arrived and bring it back to Harold Smith.
Whether Chiun liked it or not.
Remo leaned over to Chiun and nodded toward the last of the horsemen, who was vanishing over the crest of the dune.
"What do you think, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"The Koreans are very good horsemen."
"These aren't Koreans."
"I know they are not Koreans. I am just telling you that the Koreans are very good horsemen. We introduced horses into Japan. Did you know that?"
"I didn't, but I'm sure I'm going to find out all about it now."
"No, you won't," Chiun said, shaking his head. "I am finished telling you things that you do not appreciate or understand."
"We've got to talk," Remo said.
"About what?"
"About this whole thing. You and I just can't go
tangling with each other because of some damned oil-eating bug."
"That's what am talking about," Chiun said.
"Huh?"
"Really, Remo, you are hopeless. What do you think would happen if you went into the capital city and told them that Sheik Fareem was going to destroy the country's oil supply?"
"I think they'd send the army back here to wipe him out."
"Exactly. And you would march with them?"
"I don't generañy work with groups," Remo said.
"Ahh, but you could," Chiun said. "You could lead them. And I could lead the sheik's men. We Koreans know all about horses. And we could let them fight, you and I, and we would not have to."
"Why don't you just stay with me, let's get the bacterium and get the hell out of here?" asked Remo.
"Because I have a contract. It is older than my contract with Smith and takes precedence over it I have to honor it."
"Let's think about it," Remo said.
Talking to Chiun, he noticed six men busy burying three posts into the sand twenty-five feet in front of the reviewing stand. The posts were padded, covered with cloth, and after their triangular bases were buried, they stood six feet high. They were spaced eight feet apart in a line and reminded Remo of striking dummies he had often seen in karate centers.
This would be it, Remo thought. Because the girl, Zantos, had told him that there would be an attempt on his life, he had been on guard all day. But the sword-flashing displays and the rodeo riding had contained no threats to him. But these posts, obviously some kind of target and so conveniently set up in front of him, would provide the frilling attempt.
He glanced over toward the sheik and saw Ganulle looking at him sharply. The pinch-faced Arab smiled at him condescendingly; it was a smile that told Remo
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that Ganulle thought he knew something that Remo didn't.
The try would come now.
Did Chiun know about it?
Would Chiun care?
Were they now really enemies? He and Chiun on opposing sides. Did that mean that he could die and Chiun would not care?
He wondered about that and leaned over to Chiun and said softly, "Little Father, I..."