The kid had a nice way of looking at things. Maybe Remo's feelings were just a brief throwback to his days before training. This anger surprised him, though. He wasn't supposed to feel anger anymore, just a unity with all the forces that made him work correctly.
Then why was he worried? He had nothing to worry about. Just a feeling, and feelings didn't kill people. Of course, other people weren't so finely tuned that even their emotions were expected to be synchronized with their movements and their breathing and their being. It was almost like a golfer who, if he finished in a wrong position, knew-even without looking-that he had hit the ball wrong.
But, Remo told himself, nothing had gone wrong. Therefore, nothing was wrong.
And besides, only he had to know about it. Nothing was wrong.
Halfway across the country, the last Master of Sinanju, sun source of all the martial arts and defender of the Korean village of Sinanju, knew something was wrong, and he waited for Remo to return.
Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, was in the American city of Dayton in the state of Ohio. Dayton looked to Chiun just like all other American cities with green signs and fine highways, just like Rome in the time of the Great Wang, the greatest of all Masters of Sinanju. Chiun had often told Remo about the similarities between serving Rome, as did the Great Wang, and serving America.
Of course, in the histories of Sinanju, nothing was quite so strange as this country which had given birth to Remo.
As Master, it was Chiun's responsibility to pass on the history of his masterhood, just as it would someday be Remo's responsibility.
Chiun would not lie in writing the history of his reign because that would be dangerous to other Masters who would follow and carry out the work as great assassins to the world. But he did not necessarily, when writing his histories, include all the facts. Such as the fact that Remo was not only not born in Sinanju, and was not only not Korean, but he was not even Oriental. He was a white and therein was the problem. Remo had been raised white, taught white and lived among whites until Chiun had gotten him with more then twenty-five years of bad habits ingrained in him.
In the many centuries of the assassins of Sinanju, each Master faced an occasional time in which all that he had been trained to be would recede, only to blossom fully again. A Master who had been raised in the village of Sinanju could deal with this because, as a Korean child, he had been taught the game of hide.
All the children of Sinanju knew that every so often a Master would return to his house and not again cross the threshold for a long time. He would stay there and it was the task of the village to tell everyone he had left and was off serving some other emperor or king.
It was the game called hide. And every Sinanju-trained Master knew that when his powers were less and he had descended from peak, he must hide and remove himself from service until it passed.
But what would Remo know? What would he remember? What white games were there to tell him what to do? Would he remember where he was raised in that white Catholic orphanage? What games could the Church of Rome teach Remo that would prepare him for the moment of coming down from his peak?
How could he know that in feeling again old feelings that he had thought were buried he was being given a signal to hide, to retreat like a wounded animal until he was well again?
These were the questions the Master of Sinanju, in Dayton, Ohio, United States, asked himself. Because he knew Remo's problem. He had seen the signs in Remo even though Remo hadn't yet seen them. Oddly enough, the trouble began when one felt perfection, a total unity of mind and thought and body.
Remo had been happy before he left and Chiun had criticized him for it.
"What's wrong with feeling perfect, Little Father?" Remo had said.
"To feel perfect can be a lie," Chiun had said.
"Not when you know it's so," Remo said.
"From what place is the most dangerous fall?" asked Chiun.
"I know what bothers you, Little Father. I'm happy."
"Why shouldn't you be? You have been given everything of Sinanju."
"So what is there to worry about?" Remo had asked.
"You have not been given birth in Sinanju."
"My eyes are always going to be round," Remo said.
But it was not the eyes. It was the childhood, and Chiun had not given so many years of his life to see it wasted now because of an accident of birth. He knew what to do. He would use the American telephone: Even if Remo didn't know it, Chiun knew it. Remo was in trouble.
Chiun's movements were like molten glass, slow but with a sureness of flow that transcended the normal jerky movements of men. His long fingernails stretched from a golden kimono reaching for the black plastic thing on the hotel-room table, the thing with the buttons. He had parchment-frail skin and wisps of white hair hung down over his ears. He looked elderly, as old as sand, but his eyes danced like a falcon on the soar.
From his robe he took the proper codes that worked the thing that Americans placed all over their country. Their telephones. He was going to work one. He was going to save Remo from himself.
He did not even try to assume the essence of the instrument. He had tried that before, several times, and feeling nothing, sensing nothing, let it be. But now, this was the only way to reach Emperor Smith, a white who was always as remote as a faraway wall. He was a man, Chiun truly believed, who was filled with a plan to seize the country and the plan was either brilliant or sheer lunacy.
Remo, in his innocence, continually assured Chiun that Smith had no plan for national takeover. First, he said, Smith was not an emperor. He was simply Dr. Harold W. Smith. Second, Remo said, both Smith and Remo worked for an organization they wanted no one to know about. This organization enabled the government to work and enabled the country to survive by working outside the Constitution against the country's enemies.
Remo even showed Chiun a copy of that document once. Chiun had admitted it was truly beautiful with all its rights and protections, all its many ways of doing things to exalt its citizens.
"Do you pray this often?" Chiun had said.
"It's not a prayer. It's our basic social contract."
"I do not see your signature, Remo, unless of course you are really John Hancock."
"No, of course I'm not."
"Are you Thomas Jefferson?" Chiun asked.
"No. They're dead," Remo said.
"Well, if you didn't sign it and Emperor Smith didn't sign it and most people did not sign it, how can it be a basic social contract?"
"Because it is. And it's beautiful. It's what my country is about, the country that pays Sinanju for your services in training me."
"They could not pay me for what I have taught you," Chiun said.
"Well, it's who I serve. And who Smitty serves. Do you understand?"
"Of course. But when do we remove the current President for Emperor Smith?"
"He is not an emperor. He serves the President. "
"Then when do we remove the President's opponent?" Chiun asked, truly trying to understand.
"We don't. The people do. They vote. They vote who they want to be President."
"Then why have an assassin with the power to remove a President or keep him in office?" Chiun had asked.
Confronted by absolute logic, Remo had given up and Chiun had copied the Constitution into the history of the House of Sinanju so that perhaps, one day in the future generation, someone in Sinanju would figure out what these people were up to.
Now on the American instrument, Chiun was reaching out for Emperor Smith. With these devices, the person speaking could be anywhere. The next room or across the continent. But Chiun knew that Emperor Smith ruled from a place in the state of New York called Rye, and often from an island called St. Maarten in the Caribbean. When he was there, Chiun often wondered if he had been sent into exile or was waiting for the President to be removed from the throne, a service Sinanju would provide on request.
Chiun carefully pressed the numbered code into the machine. The machine spoke back with little bipping gurgles. There were many numbers. There were many bips. One mistake, one number wrongly inserted, a six instead of a seven and the machine would not work.