Remo stood without reacting. A tendril of perspiration trickled out from under his scalp.
"Or," continued Chiun, "I can release you from this state, and you may be allowed to accompany me as my official translator and gofer."
Remo had no reaction.
"I will give you one opportunity to reply. If your reply is not to my liking, I will return you to this unfortunate state and be on my way."
The fingernail touched Remo in the exact center of his forehead, and he snapped alert once more.
"I am not doing any more assignments, Smitty!" Remo barked.
"It is too late," Chiun said lightly. "For I have hung up the telephone, and we are late for our flight to Virginland."
Remo hesitated, one eye on the fingernail hovering just before his chin. The other flicked to the open door, and he calculated his chances of getting out of the room before the Master of Sinanju, who had taught him everything he knew of value, could react. Remo decided his chances were about equal to his sprouting wings.
"I want proof of Smith's good faith before day's end," said Remo.
"And I wish to see evidence that the wisdom I have poured into your thick white head has not leaked out through some hitherto unsuspected hole. Never in the past would you have succumbed to my paralyzing stroke so easily, Remo. For shame. Your head is full of useless dreams and longings, and they have befogged your brain to the point of its former roundeyed denseness. Next you will be consuming burned cow patties once more. O, that I lived to see you sink to this low state," Chiun moaned, throwing back his head and resting the back of an ivory hand against his smooth forehead. He held that pose until Remo spoke again.
"Knock it off. This is important to me."
"Yes, of course. Your roots. You must find your, roots. O, that you had only been born a tree so that they would always be at your unmoving feet, where you could admire them. But you were born a man. You have no roots. You have feet." Chiun looked down at Remo's feet, which were encased in handmade Italian loafers. "Large, ugly, club knobs, but still recognizable as feet. You have no roots. Have I not told you so a thousand times?"
"Somebody gave birth to me," said Remo.
"Possibly," Chiun said thinly
"Someone else fathered me."
"This, too, is within the realm of the possible," admitted Chiun.
"I want to find out who they are and why they left me on that orphanage doorstep."
"Why do you need to know this trivia? Is is not enough to know that you were abandoned? If you had hitched a ride in an automobile and the driver abruptly stopped to leave you by the side of the road, would you dedicate your adult life to discovering this cretin's life story?"
"It's not the same thing."
"But it is. Those who brought you into the world cast you away like a broken toy. Is there not a more ungrateful and callous act imaginable?"
"I need to know why. Everything that's happened to me in life happened because of it. If I had not grown up in an orphanage, I probably wouldn't have ended up a cop or joined the Marines and gone to Nam. Without Nam, I wouldn't have met MacCleary, who fingered me so Smith could frame me for that killing. Because I was an orphan and had no family, Smith figured I was the perfect candidate for CURE. Think how my life would have gone if I'd never met Smith."
"You would never have met me." And because the bond between them was strong, the Master of Sinanju looked up into his pupil's angry face with expectant eyes.
Remo hesitated. "All I wanted was a normal life."
"Instead, you got an extraordinary life. No white person has ever been so blessed as you. Since the first Master emerged from the caves of mist, only my ancestors were considered worthy of learning the art of Sinanju, the sun source of all fighting arts, and only the best of them. Only Koreans, the most perfect creatures to tread the earth. No whites. Until you. And you are not happy."
"I never wanted to be an assassin."
In the act of pirouetting about the room, Chiun abruptly whirled to fix his pupil with triumphant eyes.
"And you are not!" he crowed. "You are a Sinanju assassin. The finest of this era or any other."
"I don't want to be an assassin anymore. I want to find myself."
"You do not need to find yourself, Remo Williams. Now that you have been discovered by Sinanju."
"You make it sound like I'm some new specimen."
"You are a white Sinanju Master. My ancestors would be proud to know that I have taken a lowly white and raised him up to near-Koreanhood." Chiun caught himself. "After they finished castigating me for squandering my talents on so pointless a task. But times were hard, there were no suitable clients in this modern world and I had to make do with the meager offers that came to me. I have taken a white foundling and made him a Master of Sinanju. O, wonderful me."
"Stuff it. I'm through with CURE. I don't want to be an assassin or a counterassassin."
"Do not speak that horrid white word in my presence."
"I'm finding myself. After that, I'll take what comes."
Chiun fixed Remo with one steely eye. "You have been taking what came to you all your life. Why show initiative now?"
Remo said nothing.
"You will come with me to the Province of Virgins?"
"Virginia," corrected Remo.
"Good. It is settled."
"Wait a minute! I didn't promise anything. I'm on strike. Besides, it's Memorial Day. A national holiday."
This time Remo actually saw the Master of Sinanju's fingernail arrow toward his forehead. He stepped forward as if to offer himself to the paralyzing nail, then slipped down and out of the way so elegantly the Master of Sinanju had to catch himself before he impaled the white-painted wall of Remo's bedroom.
Recovering, Chiun took his wrists in his hands and let the wide sleeves of his kimono close over them. A tinge of pride suffused his aged mummy face.
"Perhaps not all of my training has been a waste after all," he murmured with a hint of fatherly pride.
ON THE FLIGHT, Chiun was saying, "Listen well. We go to put down a rebellion. It is a difficult thing, being different than a war between nations."
"I don't think a new civil war is breaking out."
The plane sat at the gate at Boston's Logan Airport. Passengers were still coming on board. A potbellied man wearing the full sideburns and blue uniform of the Union Army was boarding.
A stewardess stopped him. "Sir, you'll have to check that pistol." She pointed to his gun-belt holster.
"It is only a replica Dragoon," said the man in an exaggerated New England twang that Remo had never heard spoken on the street-only by comedians playing broad-dialect New Englanders. "It's a blackpowder weapon. Perfectly legal."
"Nevertheless, it constitutes a firearm, and I'll have ask you to check it."