"Please hst," said the voice.
"Nothing went wrong," said Remo, realizing that he was now arguing with a computer. This did not bother him that much this morning on the Denver sidewalk. He usually found that most people weren't any more reasonable or flexible than computers were.
"Is that all that went wrong?" the computer asked.
"Nothing went wrong," Remo said.
"Anything else that is wrong?"
"Nothing went wrong," said Remo. He wondered if he could outlast a computer.
"You are not reporting properly. . . ." And then there was a click on the phone.
"Remo, what went wrong?" This voice was tight, bitter, and acid.
"Oh, hiya, Smitty. I just called the wrong number."
"Then everything went well?"
"Did you think it wouldn't?" 26
"I have to come up with something better for these telephones," Smith said. "We just have trouble communicating."
"Here's the best way," Remo said. "Don't you call me. And I won't call you."
Smith cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'm glad I've got you. We must make contact immediately."
"I just worked this morning," Remo said.
"Even on this phone line, I cannot talk."
"Everything is hush-hush," Remo said. "And everything is secret. I hate all this secret crap."
"This is the most dangerous thing ever to happen to the industrialized world," Smith said.
"Okay, so get to me in a month or so, will you?"
"A month or so may be too late," Smith said.
"Too late. Everything is always too late. Or too early, or too dangerous, but nothing really ever changes. Nothing."
"Remo, this is the most desperate situation we have ever encountered. We must make contact."
"I don't know your damned codes. You give me a code to meet you in Washington and I wind up in Texas. I can't put up with this crap anymore," Remo said.
"Just give me your hotel. Fast. And we'll get off the line."
"Skyview Hilton, room 105."
The line went dead, and Remo walked the Denver streets to the hotel and room 105.
It was a suite, and from one of the rooms came the voice of an announcer promising a rebate if you bought his gasoline, followed by a news break about how Arab armies were massing on the borders of Israel and Ga-mal Abdel Nasser promising screaming mobs that they were about to push Israel into the sea.
This was followed by another commercial for a $2,-500 car. Remo could almost recite the commercials and the programs they went with by heart. He must have heard each of them fifty times in the past ten years.
27
It would only be five more minutes anyhow. When he heard the show end, Remo opened the door slowly. A frail figure in a yellow kimono sat before the flickering television; a video recorder was next to the TV.
He turned. The face was parchment-frail, the beard and hah* wispy around the yellow face. There were tears in the hazel Oriental eyes.
"That was entertainment," said Chiun. "That dealt in beauty."
"You've heard about Dr. Lawrence Walters not telling Cathy Dunstable about her real father two dozen times at least. How can you be moved by it?" Remo asked.
"Beauty is beauty. And you people must destroy everything that is fine and decent."
"Me? I haven't touched your soap operas." "Whites did it," said Chiun. "Yes," Remo said agreeably. "You're white." "All day," said Remo.
"Violence. Nothing but violence," said Chiun, Master of Sinanju, and the mentor who had given Remo the genius of Sinanju, not as a pupil but as a son, not because he liked Remo but because Remo was the vessel who could hold the river of the teachings of Sinanju. It had been both a joy and a surprise to Chiun, Remo realized, to find that a white man could absorb Sinanju, which was the sun source of all the martial arts, the center, of which karate, tae kwan do, ninja, and all the others were just weak shadows.
"If you don't like the sex and violence hi the new soap operas, don't watch them. Just don't go blaming them on me."
"I do not watch them," Chiun said. "So what have I done, then? Why are you on the snot?"
"You never watched the great dramas when they were good. And why? Because I can try to teach you some things but beauty you will never know." "Smitty is coming here," said Remo.
28 _. '
"Never know," said Chiun. "Because you are white. 1 knew this when I assumed the burden of your teaching through the generousness that was in me."
"You started teaching me because upstairs filled a submarine with gold and sent it to your village. You didn't expect to do anything but teach a couple of blows and then leave with the gold."
"Through the generousness that was in me. Yes. I knew you were white, Remo, but what I did not understand, could not understand, was how white."
"I didn't have anything to do with making your damned soap operas sexy or violent," Remo said.
"And yet, seeing how helpless you were, I gave years, when days would have been enough."
"Nobody hi Sinanju, Little Father. No Korean could take Sinanju. You stayed because I could do it. A white man did it. Me. White," said Remo.
"The best years of my life."
"White," said Remo.
"Very white," said Chiun.