"Chiun, no!" Remo yelled. He started around the small pond of water.
But he was too late. Chiun had dropped the tube into the small drinking pool.
"It is all an underground system, Remo," he said. "From here, this anaerobic will find its way to the underground oil, and from there it will do its work."
Remo stopped and looked down at the crystal waters of the pool. As he watched, he saw tiny churnings in the water and then, before his eyes,-a lump of white wax was formed that looked as if it had been broken off the base of a thick, half-burned candle. The white blob just floated on top of the pond.
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Remo reached down and picked it up. It lay cold and motionless in his hand. He looked up at Chiun, then squeezed the white glob in his hand, and it cracked into pieces and fell back into the pond. It floated there, not moving, not expanding, still as death.
"Water kills it," Remo said. "Water kills it."
Chiun squatted by the side of the pool and let some of the water sift through his fingers.
"That island was surrounded by water," he said. "Why did that not kill it and stop its spread?"
"I don't know," Remo said.
Chiun raised his fingers to his mouth and tasted of them. "It is nothing," he said. "It is only water."
Remo tasted the water too.
"Chiun, that's it. That's exactly it. It's pure water. The island was surrounded by salt water. But this is pure water. Pure. That's what kills it."
He stood up, as did Chiun, and they looked at each other across the six-foot-wide pond.
"You have caused me to fail in my mission," Chiun said solemnly.
"My pleasure," Remo said.
"This cannot be allowed to exist between us," Chiun said.
"If you say so."
"We will meet in battle to settle all," Chiun said.
"What?" asked Remo.
"Tonight. At sundown. Over there." He pointed back into the oasis. "Under that large tree."
"Are you kidding?" Remo said, but the look on Chiun's face was grim.
"Be there," Chiun said. "Do not make me come to get you."
He turned away and strode off into the trees of the
oasis.
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Chapter Thirteen
The oasis had been cleared. At Chiun's order, no one was allowed there to witness the battle.
The sun was just disappearing below the sand hüls to the west when Remo stepped into a cool, tree-surrounded glade in the center of the oasis. Far off, through the trees, he could see people standing, straining to see what was going on. He saw the sheik and, next to him, Reva Bleem.
But where was Chiun?
"I am here, Remo," a voice said softly.
Remo spun. Chiun stood behind him, wearing a midnight-blue brocaded kimono with ornamental bead-work over the shoulders.
"Are we really going through with this?" Remo said.
"Of course not," Chiun said. "Quick. Kick at me."
Remo leaped into the air and pushed a kick out at Chiun, but the small Oriental swirled away from under the kick and was behind Remo as Remo came down.
They circled each other warily.
"What are we doing here?" Remo asked.
"Don't you know anything? We are trying to find out who is behind that anaerobic."
Chiun spun high into the air, twirling like a top. His robe spread out around his slim form, shielding the outline of his legs and arms from the sight of a potential victim. Then he lashed out with a hand. Remo slid back from the deadly fingertips, and Chiun's hand smashed into the side of a foot-thick palm. The tree
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cracked. Remo heard it creaking and then dropping down behind him.
"I think the woman is an assassin sent by our enemy," Chiun said. They continued to circle.
"Why?" asked Remo. He threw a kick, which Chiun easily blocked.
"Because she has been trying to set me against you, you against me."
"I think she's had the bacteria all the while," Remo said.
Chiun nodded and came at Remo with a multiple knife attack of the hands, in which the hands and forearms, held stiff, chopped at an opponent like the multiple blades of a knife, chopping vegetables. Remo blocked sixteen blows with the outsides of his wrists. Chiun threw a seventeenth, and when it was not blocked, he pulled it short and just flicked a fingernail at Remo's right earlobe.
"Dammit, that hurts," Remo said. "It is supposed to, idiot. If somebody else got through your defense so easily, he would not just tweak your ear."
"Chiun, there is nobody in the world besides you and me who can even throw those blows. There is no somebody else."
"That's what you say now," Chiun said. "At any rate, don't embarrass me. Try to make this look like a fight. The woman has had the anaerobic, but she did not produce it until today. I think her instructions were to set us against each other so that one would die, and then to kill the survivor. Or to bring the survivor to her master."