"Because I have talked to the sheik," Chiun said. "She represents a friend of the sheik's, but a strange friend whom he has never met. She knows no more
202
about him. I think she does not know who she is working for, so applying force to her will do nothing."
"I think her boss might be the guy back on the island who tried to get you to work for him. Remember? On the telephone?"
"Yes," said Chiun. He rushed at Remo, and they locked arms. In silhouette against the fading sky, they looked like two giant elks, tugging and pulling at each other. "And I think she got her instructions through that whatchamacallit," Chiun said, "while I was talking on the telephone."
"Computer terminal," Remo said.
"Yes. That," Chiun said. "I think you must find and kill her master, or forever we will face all manner of enemy."
"But why are we going through with this charade?" asked Remo, who rolled away from Chain's grasp, flipped, and landed lightly facing Chiun, who was again on him. He windmilled his arms meaninglessly over Remo's head. It looked ferocious, but all it did was fan Remo's face.
"I think if she believes me dead, she may be prepared to take you to her master. That is what you want," Chiun said.
"There's one thing I don't understand."
"That is a vast improvement over your usual amount of ignorance," Chiun said.
"If you are committed to being on the sheik's side, why are you on my side?"
"You are an idiot."
"Please stop calling me an idiot and explain things to me," Remo said.
"I don't know why I bother," Chiun said. "It is true I had an obligation to the sheik. But I checked that contract in the sheik's trunk. My obligation was to save his life and to afford him victory over his enemies. I did those things today. Nowhere in there does it say anything about my having to help him destroy oil with anaerobic. Nowhere in there, Remo. Oil is very important, Remo."
203
Remo, suddenly suspicious, asked, "Why?"
"Because oil is used to make plastic. Plastic is used to make television sets. To make tapes to show pictures on those television sets. There are many things oil is good for." He tossed Remo through the air. Remo's body headed directly for the thick trunk of a tree, with force that would shatter his skull if it hit the unyielding wood. But in the air, Remo rolled his body over, and when he hit the tree, it was with his feet. He allowed his knees to bend, to cushion the shock of the impact, then pressed back with his legs and launched himself back through the air in the other direction. Chiun stood still and let Remo wrap an arm around him and bring him to the sand. He hissed into Remo's ear. "Quick, now, slash a blow into the sand alongside my head." Remo did.
"And again," Chiun said.
Remo did again.
"Then you will let them know that I am dead and that you are Master. And then tonight you will claim that woman, and she will tell you all you need to know. Use the short program."
"What will I do with you?" Remo asked.
"I certainly don't want to be in your tent when you are doing whatever disgusting thing it is you do with women to make them like you. You can put me back in my own tent. Tell them it is tradition that my body must be left alone, untouched, until my spirit soars to heaven. Tell them any nonsense. They're Arabs; they believe in fairy tales. And then tomorrow, we'll get out of this stupid place. Now, please, another hand blow. I don't want to die too easily."
Remo reared back, high, poised for a longer time than was necessary just to make sure that the spectators watching him through the trees could see his move. Then he plunged downward and jabbed his fingers deep into the sand alongside Chiun's head. He knew that in silhouette, it would look as if he had applied the finishing stroke to Chiun's head.
He paused there for a moment, as if exhausted, then
stood and raised his arms over his head in the prize fighter's signal of victory.
"Don't get carried away, Remo," said Chiun softly.
"The Master is dead," Remo shouted. "I am the Master."
And Chiun hissed, "You wish."
Remo carried Chiun away from the oasis in his arms. Once he whispered, "You're getting fat, Little Father."
"Seven stones," Chiun whispered. "I never change. I will always be sweet, lovable, and small."
"Fat," Remo said.
"Silence. We are drawing near."
Remo stood in front of Sheik Fareem in the early evening darkness and said, "The Master is dead."
In the light of a campfire, Remo could see tears in Fareem's eyes.
"I would carve you in half," he told Remo bitterly. "But the Master himself made me pledge that neither I nor any of my people would lift a hand against you."
"I am pleased with that," Remo said, "as would be my father. He will lie in his tent tonight. No one may visit him because his soul must be undisturbed until it is accepted into eternity by his ancestors. It is our way."
"It shall be as you wish," Fareem said.
The only trouble with Chiun's impersonation of a corpse, Remo decided, was that dead men didn't generally snore. Not that Chiun's snore, as he slept in state in his tent, was the occasional full-throated goose honk that ruined Remo's sleep and occasionally startled Chiun from his own bed with a quizzical look on his face as he glanced around, wondering what flight of migrating birds had had the temerity to pass through his sleeping chamber.
No, this was not Chiun's full snore, but a tinny, hissing sip of air that Remo knew could not be heard by anyone but him.
205
The village now was silent, and Remo could hear the faint puffs of breeze rustling the fronds of the palm trees. He heard steps coming toward his tent.
Remo feigned sleep, and Reva Bleem slipped into bis teat and crossed the saad floor toward him. She was tryiag to be säent, but her skidding steps filled Remo's ears and drowned out the faint hiss of Chiun sleeping. Reva wore a heavy, musky perfume that overpowered Remo's delicate senses and made him wonder how a bee could stand being a bee with its nose stuck hito flowers all day. Didn't bees ever want to throw up?
"Remo?" Reva whispered.
"Ummmm," he answered, as if still asleep and responding to a sound that had somehow flickered into his consciousness.
"Don't wake up, Remo," she said. "I'm going to take care of you while you're sleeping."
He felt Reva slip onto the sleeping mat beside him and felt her hand rest lightly on his naked stomach.
As if moving in his sleep, he reached over with his left hand and brushed the inside of her left wrist. Among the things Chiun had taught Remo iñ their interminable training were the methods for transporting women to sexual ecstasy. Remo had learned three separate techniques. One took twenty-seven steps, another took thirty-seven, and the third took fifty-two, but Chiun had warned him never to use that technique on a normal woman because it would make her insane.
"Then why bother learning it," Remo had said, "if I'm not allowed to use it on a woman? I'm sure as dick not going to use it on a man."