Over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fielding spoke.
"I suppose you're wondering what I'm doing, Oliver," said Mr. Fielding. "As you know, I have eleven months, two weeks to live, inside date. Maybe even less. One can't trust the human body. To some, this would be a tragedy. Would it be a tragedy to you, Oliver?"
"What, Mr. Fielding?"
"Would death be a tragedy to you?"
"Yes sir."
"To me, Oliver, it's freedom. I am no longer bound to protect my image in Denver. Do you know why I cultivated my image in Denver, keeping my fun to El Paso and places like that?"
"No sir."
"Because the bugs crawl all over you if you're different, if you frighten them. Bugs hate anything better than them."
"Yes sir."
"Well, in a year, they can't get to me. And I'm going to get them first. More than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse-tung. I will get a million. A billion at least. Not millions. A billion. A billion bugs, Oliver. Me. I will do it. And none of them will be able to bother me again. Oliver, it will be beautiful."
"Yes sir."
"If you knew you were going to die, Oliver, would you stop saying 'yes sir' and say 'fuck you, Mr. Fielding'?"
"Never, sir."
"Let's see, Oliver."
And James Orayo Fielding snapped on his oxygen mask and brought the plane up to where he saw Oliver slump back, unconscious, and he reached behind himself and unsnapped Oliver's safety strap and put the twin-engine Cessna into a dive. Oliver flipped back out of his seat and was pressed by the force of gravity into the rear of the plane. When Fielding leveled the Cessna at three thousand feet, Oliver curled into a ball on the floor.
"Ohhh," he said, regaining consciousness. He lifted himself on his hands and as his head cleared and as he breathed more easily, he felt himself being pulled forward. Mr. Fielding had put the plane in a slight dive. And Oliver was going forward, toward the door on the left. Suddenly the plane banked left and Oliver was going out through the door. He grabbed the bottom bar of a seat and clutched.
"Mr. Fielding, Mr. Fielding! Help! Help!" he yelled, the air whipping at his midsection, the liquid of his bladder running out through his trousers.
"You may now say 'fuck you'," said Fielding.
"No sir," said Oliver. .
"Well, then, don't say I didn't give you your chance. Goodbye, Oliver."
And the plane rolled farther to its left until Oliver was holding on to the seat, now above him, and as it cruised that way, Oliver felt his hands grown numb. Perhaps Mr. Fielding was just testing him, knew exactly how long it would take, and then would turn the plane aright and help him back in. Mr. Fielding was a peculiar sort, but not totally cruel. He wouldn't kill his manservant, Oliver. The plane snapped back abruptly over to its other side and Oliver found himself holding air, his body moving forward at the same speed as the plane, then downward. Very downward.
Oliver knew this because the plane appeared to be going up while flying level. And as Oliver spun, he saw the broad Pennsylvania country grow clearer and bigger beneath him! And it was coming towards him. He went beyond panic into that peace of dying men, where they understand that they are one with the universe, eternal with all life, the coming and going of one part of all that life, just a throb.
And Oliver saw the white and blue Cessna dive. And Mr. Fielding had come down to see Oliver's face. Mr. Fielding in a dive looking at Oliver, red-faced and yelling something. What was it? Oliver couldn't hear. He waved goodbye and smiled and said softly, "God bless you, Mr. Fielding."
Shortly thereafter, Oliver met a field of green summer corn.
James Orayo Fielding pulled up out of the dive still screaming.
"Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'."
Fielding trembled at the controls. His hands were sweaty on the instruments. He felt his stomach heave. Oliver hadn't been a bug; he had shown incredible courage. What if Fielding were wrong about bugs? What if he were wrong about everything? He was going to be just as dead as Oliver. Nothing could save him.
By Ohio, Fielding wrested back control of himself. A momentary panic happened to everyone. He had done the absolutely right thing. Oliver had to die. He had seen the plan, just as sure as hairs placed atop folders did not move by themselves.
Everything would work perfectly. Within eleven months, one week and six days.
(Inside).
CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and the hot Newark night offended him, and the smells from the alley where rats scratched inside open garbage cans filled his senses with decay and the occasional street lights cast more glare than illumination. It was summer and it was Newark, New Jersey, and he was never to come back to this city alive because he had left it dead.
This was where he was born. Down the street a large dark red brick building with broken glass shards in empty black frames stood surrounded by litter-heavy lots, waiting to become a lot itself. That was where he was raised. He used to say it was where he was educated until his real education began. That was where he was Remo Williams and the nuns taught him washing, bedmaking, politeness, and that rulers on knuckles hurt when you were caught in violation. Later he would learn that punishment for sin was haphazard but the effects of sin were immediate. They told in your body and your breathing; they robbed you of proper-ness, which could mean death. But the death was haphazard; the improperness itself was the real punishment. In this new life, the sins were panic and laziness, and the original sin was incompetence.
Remo thought of the ruler as he made out the old soot-covered concrete lettering above the boarded-up door:
"St. Theresa's Orphanage."
He would have liked to have seen Sister Mary Elizabeth now. Open up his hand for that ruler and let her flail away and laugh at her. He had tried by sheer willpower more than twenty years before. But Sister Mary Elizabeth knew her business better than Remo had known his. Smiles were not too convincing when your hand trembled and your eyes watered. But he didn't know then about pain. Now she could have used a kitchen knife and it wouldn't cut his flesh.
"You there," came a voice from behind him. Remo had heard the car move silently up the street. He glanced over his shoulder. A uniformed police sergeant, his face shiny from the sweat of night heat, leaned out the open squad car window. His hands were hidden. Remo knew he held a weapon. He was not sure how he knew. Perhaps it was the way the man held his body. Perhaps it was in the man's face. There was much Remo knew today that he did not understand. Having reasons for things was a Western idea. He just knew there was a gun hidden by the car door.
"You there," said the police sergeant. "What're you doing in this neighborhood?"
"Putting up a resort motel," said Remo.
"Hey, wise guy, you know where you are?"
"From time to time," said Remo cryptically.
"It's not safe here for white men."
Remo shrugged.
"Hey, I know you," the sergeant said. "No. It couldn't be."
He got out of the squad car, putting his revolver back in his holster.
"You know, you look like someone I used to know," said the sergeant. And Remo tried to remember the man. The sergeant's name tag read Duffy, William P., and Remo remembered a far younger man who, as a rookie, practiced quick draws with his gun. This one's face was fleshy and his eyes were tired and he smelled richly of his last meat meal. You could feel his senses were dead.
"You look almost exactly like this guy I used to know," said Sergeant Duffy. "He was raised in that orphanage. Except you're younger than he would be and you're skinnier."
"And better looking," said Remo.
"Naah, that guy was better looking. Straight as hell, that guy. Poor guy. He was a cop."
"A good cop?" asked Remo.
"Naah. Dumb, kind of. Straight, you know. They framed the poor bastard. Got the chair. Oh, more than ten years ago. Gee, you look like him."
"What do you mean he was dumb?"
"Hey, any
cop what goes to the chair for doing in a pusher and then screaming that he never did it, I mean, that's stupid. There are ways to get around that sort of thing. I mean, even now when you got porkchops running the city. You just don't stand up, screaming you're innocent. If you know what I mean. The whole thing stunned the department."
"You missed him, huh?" said Remo.
"Naaah. Guy had no friends, no family, nothing. It was just the idea that a cop would get it. You know. They wouldn't even let the poor bastard make a plea or nothing. You know."
"Nobody missed him," said Remo.
"Nobody. Guy was as straight as hell. A real pain in the ass."
"You still practice fast draws in the John, Duff?"
"Naah," said Duffy, then backed away, his eyes wide in horror.
"That guy's dead," he said. "Remo's dead more than ten years now. Hey. Get outta here. Get outta here or I run you in."
"What's the charge, Duff? Still confused about the correct charge?"
"No. No. This is a fucking dream," said Duffy.
"You want to see something funny, Duff? Draw," said Remo and he snapped the whole holster off the belt leaving a light brown scar on the thick black shiny leather. Sergeant Duffy's hand came down on empty space.
"You get slower as you age, meat-eater," said Remo and returned the holster-encased gun. Duffy did not see the hands move or hear the small crack of metal. Stunned, he opened his holster and parts of his revolver tinkled on the hot night sidewalk.
"Jeez. Friggin' freak," gasped Sgt. Duffy. "What'dya do with the gun? That cost me money. I'm gonna have to pay."
"We all pay, Duff."
And Duffy's partner at the wheel, hearing the commotion, came out gun drawn but found only Duffy, bewildered, staring at an empty holster ripped from his belt.
"He's gone," said Duffy. "I didn't even see him go and he's gone."
"Who?" said the partner.
"I didn't even see him move and now he's not here."
"Who?" said the partner.
"You remember that guy I told you about once. All the veterans knew him. Sent to the chair, no appeal, nothing. Next to the last man executed in the state. More than ten years ago, at least."
"Yeah?"
"I think I just seen him. Only he was younger and he talked funny."
Sergeant Duffy was helped back to the car and examined by the police surgeon who suggested a short rest away from a hostile urban environment. He was relieved of duty temporarily and an inspector had a long talk with his family and while he was in the Duffy household, he asked where the drill press was.
"We're looking for the power tool he used to break his gun. The police surgeon believes the gun is symbolic of his subconscious desire to leave the force," said the inspector. "Human hands don't snap a gun barrel in two."
"He didn't have no power tools," said Mrs. Duffy. "He'd just come home and drink beer. Maybe if he had a workshop, maybe he wouldn't have gone apples, huh, Inspector?"
The midday sun wilted the people on New York City's sidewalks across the Hudson from Newark. Women's spike heels sank into the soft asphalt made black gum by the heat. Remo strolled into the Plaza Hotel on Fifty-ninth Street and asked for his room key. He had been asking for his keys across the country for more than a decade now. Squirrels had nests, moles had holes, and even worms, he thought, had some piece of ground they must go to regularly. Remo had room keys. And no home.
In the elevator, a young woman in a light print purple dress that barely shielded delicate full mounds of wanting breasts commented to Remo how nice it was to be in a hotel as fine as the Plaza and wouldn't he just love to live his whole life here?
"You live in a hotel?" Remo asked.
"No. Just a split level in Jones, Georgia," said the woman, making a swift pouting face.
"It's a home," said Remo.
"It's a drag," said the woman. "I'm so excited to be here in New York City, you just don't know. Ah love it. I love it. George, he's my husband, he's here to work. But me, I'm all alone. All alone all day. I do whatever I want."
"That's nice," Remo said and watched the floor numbers blink away on the elevator panel.
"Whatever and with whoever I like," said the woman.
"That's nice," said Remo. He should have walked.
"Do you know that ninety-nine point eight percent of the women in America do not know how to make love properly?"
"That's nice."
"I'm in the point two percent that does."
"That's nice."
"Are you one of those gigolos that does it for money? You're just a doll, you know."
"That's nice," said Remo.
"I don't see anything wrong with paying for it, do you?"
"Paying for what?" Remo asked.
"Sex, silly."
"That's nice," said Remo and the elevator opened to his floor.
"Where you going?" said the woman. "Come back here. What's wrong?"
Remo stopped mid-hall and smiled evilly. In fact, he could not remember feeling so joyously thrilled with any idea he had entertained in the last decade. The woman blinked her soft brown eyes and said, "Wow."
"C'mere," said Remo and the woman ran to him, her breasts bobbing brightly.
"You want a thrill?"
"With you? Yeah. All right. Come on. Right on," she said.
"There's going to be a man coming down this hallway in about fifteen minutes. He's got a face like lemon juice. He'll be wearing a dark suit and a vest even in this weather. He's on the low side of sixty."
"Hey, I don't screw fossils, buddy."
"Trust me. The wildest time you've ever had. But you've got to say something special."
"What?" asked the girl suspiciously.
"You've got to say, 'Hello, Dr. Smith. I've read about you. All my friends have read about you.' "
"Who's Dr. Smith?"
"Never mind. Just tell him that and watch his face."
"Hello, Dr. Smith. Me and my friends have all read about you. Right?"
"You'll never regret it," said Remo.
"I don't know," said the woman.
Remo cupped a breast with his left hand and with his right thumbed a thigh and kissed her on the neck and lips until he felt her body tremble.
"Oh, yes," she moaned. "Oh, yes. I'll say it. I'll say it."
"Good," said Remo and leaned her against the wallpapering of the hallway and moved five doors down where he entered.
A wisp of an Oriental in golden flowing kimono sat lotus position in front of a darkened television screen. The plush furniture of the waiting room had been moved and stacked on one side so a blue sleeping mat with its blossoms could dominate the center of the rug.
The set had been working the day before when Remo had left to look at Newark and if someone had wrecked it in between, there would be a body to be disposed of. The Master of Sinanju did not tolerate people interrupting his special television shows. Remo checked out the bathroom and the bedroom. No bodies.
"Little Father, is everything all right?"
Chiun shook his head slowly, barely moving the strand of beard.
"Nothing is right," said Chiun, the Master of Sinanju.
"Has someone broken the television?"
"Do you see the remnants of an intruder?"
"No, Chiun."
"Then how could anyone have broken my machine of dreams? No. Worse. Far, far worse."
"I'm sorry. I have a problem myself."
"You? Do you know what they have done to the beauty of the daytime dramas? Do you know the desecration that has been performed upon the life art of your nation?"
Remo shook his head. He didn't know. But what he gathered in the next few moments was this:
As the Planet Revolves had been irreparably ruined. Doctor Blayne Huntington had been performing a legal abortion on Janet Wofford, daughter of the shipping magnate Archibald Wofford, who was financing Dr. Huntington's experiments in nuclear transmography, when nurse Adele Richards realized the baby was probably her b
rother's who was serving life in Attica for leading the prison revolt against anti-feminist literature.
"Yeah?" said Remo who always had a hard time following the soap operas.
"There was physical violence," said Chiun. And as he explained it, the nurse struck the doctor. Not only was there the intrusion of violence, but she struck him wrong. It was not a blow at all.
"But they're just actors, Little Father."
"I know that now," said Chiun. "Fraud. I will not watch another show. I shall stay in America, barren of joy, without the little breezes of pleasure in a stifled old life."
Remo, his voice heavy with sadness, said that they might not be staying.
"This is a hard thing for me to tell you, Little Father," said Remo and he lowered his eyes to the carpeting, which even in the Plaza was becoming threadbare.
"The beginning of all wisdom is ignorance," said Chiun. "It is a shame that you are always at the beginning." And this thought struck the Master of Sinanju as so humorous, he repeated it and laughed. But his pupil did not laugh with him and this Chiun attributed to the famous American lack of humor.
"Perhaps you are right," said Remo. "For more than a decade, I insisted I owed something to this country. For more then ten years, I've been a man without home or wealth or even a full name that is my own. I'm a man who doesn't exist. And everything I've done, I see today was useless."
"Useless?" said Chiun.
"Yes, Little Father. Useless. This country is not one bit different for my being here. It's even worse. The place where I was born is a garbage dump. The politicians are more corrupt, crime is having a full-banner field day, and-and the country is-it's coming apart."
By this; Chiun was puzzled and he said:
"You are one man, are you not?"
Remo nodded.
"There is no one emperor in this country, no one judge or priest who rules above all, is there?"
Remo nodded.
"Then, in this country with no ruler, how can you, an assassin, granted one given the sun source of all perfection in training, granted that even given the personal hand of a Master of Sinanju, masterhood yourself, a white no less, how can you feel you have failed? I do not understand this."
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