When the especially wealthy new student and his Oriental friend left with their counselor, Ms. Bloom, a low-budget convert to Poweressence, the manager phoned the Dolomo estate.
“Hey, Rubin, I think I saw him.”
“Who? The negative one?”
“Well, you said there was this guy with thick wrists and dark eyes who was the force of negativity. I thought it was just hype, you know. Like course number fourteen, when you ran out of astral planes to clear in course thirteen and you had to come up with a 'Reversion Protection' course. I thought that was brilliant.”
“It wasn't hype. People do revert to unhappiness.”
“Sure, sure, Rubin, but I think I actually seen this guy.”
“He's there?”
“Just left.”
“Where's he heading?”
“Straight for you and our star performer, Ms. Kathy Bowen.”
“Why did you do that?”
“He's been taking courses like there's no end to money. And he says he's got a problem with a jail thing. I thought you could help, you know. You told us to solicit those.”
“But he's the negative counterforce of our positive power.”
“Hey, Rubin. I'm a franchiser. I sell this stuff. Don't try to give it to me.”
“It's true. How do you think we got so big, so fast? I uncovered the truth in the Alarkin planet chronicles.”
“You got so big so fast because Beatrice knows how to make a buck. Look, Rubin, if you have problems with these people, why don't you take care of them in some sane way. And I don't mean some Powie nut with an alligator stuffing it in some pool somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are professionals who do things right.”
“You mean a professional hit man?”
“You can buy the best right here in Miami. This is the home of the cocaine trade. The best killers in the world are in Miami today. The best, Rubin.”
“We don't have any contacts in Miami except you.”
“What is your safety worth to you and Beatrice?”
“Thousands.”
“You can do better than that, Rubin. You clear fifteen thousand a week from my franchise alone.”
“Tens of thousands.”
“Come on, Rubin.”
“A million dollars. I can't go any higher, Beatrice will kill me.”
“No problem. Now, no more of this Alarkin planet good-force stuff. We buy the best. The absolute best.”
“They don't cost a million.”
“I do. If you want me to get them. I'm here, Rubin. I know everyone.”
“And you'll get the best.”
“The forces of negativity will have more bullets in him than a firing-range target before he leaves Miami.”
“I'll mail you the million.”
“No. Wire it. I always like it in my hands before I do real business. We don't pay these people in reducing astral negativity, Rubin.”
The hit was not complicated, the manager knew. The target would be coming to the airport, and once you knew where someone was coming, you really had a lock on the whole business. That is why of the million dollars, he only had to pay twenty-five thousand dollars to four pistoleros who promised they would empty two magazines apiece into the man and his elderly Oriental friend.
“They'll be going to California. And they'll be with this woman,” said the manager, who happened to have Daphne Bloom's picture on a counselor-evaluation application. It showed her main ambition was to be one with the positive forces of the universe.
“What do you want done with her?”
The manager, seeing that she only earned credits by teaching and was not a major donor, said that whatever was convenient for the pistoleros was fine with him.
“But you got to get the guy with the thick wrists.”
By the time Remo and Chiun reached the airport, Daphne had told them her life story. She was an especially sensitive person. By age seven she realized that five thousand years of Judaism was not the answer for her. By age fourteen she had joined three cults, all proving to lack the answer to her problems. So did Scientology, est, Sedona, Personality Reunification, and the Hare Krishnas.
“In Poweressence I found the answer to the question.”
“What's the question?” asked Remo. He looked for the shortest line at a major airline. This airport seemed to be a collection of forty airports, none of them really doing business with the other. It was strange. Chiun was being bothered by a woman who wanted to know where he bought that absolutely lovely kimono.
“It was made for me,” said Chiun.
“By whom?”
“The mother of Genghis Khan.”
“He must be beautifully clothed.”
“He's dead. And so is his mother. Many centuries now. But the Mongol women were for a while great weavers of animal hair.”
Daphne pinched Remo's arm. She pulled back her hand, startled. She could have sworn the arm pinched back.
“You weren't listening when I told you Poweressence solved the basic question of my life. The basic question of my life is who am I and where do I fit in the world scheme of things.”
“I don't know of anyone who cares about that,” said Remo. The two men in white suits were so obvious that they should have carried signs. While other people walked or strolled, these two were stalking. Their footsteps were stiffer, their backbones more rigid, and their hands never far from the bulges in their pockets. The question was, who were these two looking for? Remo knew Chiun saw them too, but Chiun was busy discussing fabric with a woman who loved his kimono.
The two were looking for something, as though they weren't ready to find it yet. Then unmistakably they made contact with someone across the airport corridor. It wasn't a nod. It was more silent than that. It was a purposeful way of not noticing someone, a smoother move of the head while they scanned. This could not be hidden.
Across the airport were two more men who just as obviously were stalking someone. One of them was looking at Daphne Bloom.
“Do you have any enemies?” asked Remo.
“No. People who truly establish their inner peace don't make enemies.”
“Well, there are four men who want to kill someone and they're looking at you.”
“They couldn't want to kill me,” said Daphne. “I offer no negative threat to anyone. You see, that was my problem before. I would send out all the negativity of my past planetary lives and create enemies. But now I don't.”
Daphne was still smiling when the first bullet rang out and Remo pushed her under the counter. Screams filled the airport. People looked for cover, and the four men advanced toward the ticket counter.
As in all crisis situations, almost everyone concentrated solely on saving his own life, and therefore any observation was secondary. So when the police put it together, they got something they had to attribute to hysteria.
There were several men firing pistols. Everyone agreed on that. Then one man or twenty men — no one could agree — began moving at the four men. Some said he moved quickly, so fast they couldn't see him. Others said his movements were strangely slow, as though he actually slowed down the whole world he was in. The gunmen seemed suddenly to become unable to fire accurately, shooting at the ceiling and the floor.
But some witnesses said that was where the quick- (or slow-) moving man was.
In any case, four narcotics enforcers were blotted up from the normally well-polished floor of the airport after the fracas. One man, who was traveling to Los Angeles with his elderly Oriental father, was the only one who said he saw absolutely nothing, and that he hid all the time. Which was just another contradiction in this strangest of all cases for the Dade County sheriff's office. Because he was the one a few people thought was doing the attacking of the gunmen.
“You were sloppy,” said Chiun. “You have not been so sloppy for years, and you say you are good enough.”
“They're dead. I'm not,” said Remo.
; “And I suppose that's good enough for you,” said Chiun.
“The other way around is no bargain.”
“Just to succeed at something is not enough. You must succeed correctly,” said Daphne.
Chiun smiled. “She is correct. Listen. Even she knows what I am talking about.”
“That's Poweressence,” said Daphne.
“That is the truth,” said Chiun.
“I'm going up front,” said Remo.
“You don't have tickets for up front,” said Daphne.
“I'll reason with someone,” said Remo.
In a few moments a harried accountant begged to take the seat in the rear of the plane instead of his first-class assignment. He had traded with a gentleman with an absolutely foul personality.
“He's met Remo,” said Daphne.
“I have had to live with him many years now,” said Chiun.
“You poor wonderful man.”
“I do not complain,” said Chiun.
“You're so decent and sweet.”
“I only do what is right,” said Chiun. “I have trained him through the years to do what is right, but he does not listen. He takes this wonderful training and gives it away to madmen.”
“That's awful,” said Daphne.
“I do not complain,” said Chiun. “We have a fine family tradition, but he ignores it.”
“That's awful,” said Daphne.
“I do not complain,” said Chiun.
“You are the most wonderful decent splendid human being I have ever met,” said Daphne.
“And you are the most perfect person ever to give a character test,” said Chiun. “You are so good at judging them.”
* * *
At the Dolomo estate, Rubin heard the good news and the bad news. The good news was that the Miami franchise was sending back the million dollars. The bad news was that the money would be returned because it hadn't been earned.
“They killed four of the best hit men in the city, Rubin, and they are coming right for you.”
Rubin Dolomo barely had enough energy to get to the Motrin bottle. He emptied it into his mouth and rested against a stack of Level Nine books called Inner Peace Through Peace Power.
Then he went to Beatrice's room and waited outside until the grunts and groans were over. Beatrice was testing out a new bodyguard. Rubin did not like the fact that she cheated on him. But it did have its rewards. When Beatrice had a new attractive man to service her, she did not bother Rubin.
Beatrice was as seductive as a freight train and just as unreasoning. Her foreplay consisted of two English sentences.
“Okay. Now.”
When the young man came out of her room, Rubin grabbed him and asked:
“Is she done? Did you satisfy her?”
“You're her husband. How can you ask that?”
“If you aren't enough, she'll want me.”
“She's done,” said the new bodyguard.
Ever so discreetly Rubin opened the door and entered his wife's boudoir. Apparently the sex had done something for her, because now she had an absolutely foolproof plan to kill the President of the United States and “get them off our backs forever.”
Chapter 8
She was eighteen. She didn't know if that were old enough for someone so distinguished.
“Hell, honey, that's old enough. You're not too young. I'm just too married.”
She laughed. She thought that was the smartest thing she had ever heard anyone say. She never knew anyone who could think of answers like that. Just right out of their head like that.
The Air Force colonel would have dismissed these remarks as absurd flattery except that they came from a strawberry blond. And she had just the sort of body he dreamed about. She came up to his shoulder and had breasts like cantaloupes. Colonel Dale Armbruster remembered using that word in describing just those kinds of breasts. It was in a character test he had taken at some kook place. He forgot the place. But Armbruster did remember it was free. And one of the questions was what his ideal sexual fantasy would be. He had described the woman. Very young, a fawning personality... And her looks. Strawberry hair, short, just up to his shoulder, and breasts like cantaloupes.
“And what negative forces keep you from enjoying this?” the young questioner had asked.
“My wife and her attorney, who could draw blood from bone.”
“So you are afraid of your wife? Would you like to live free from that sort of fear?”
“Sure. Wouldn't you?”
“I do,” the questioner had told him.
“Yeah, but you're eighteen, and I am fifty-three.”
“Do you feel that age hinders you?”
“No. There are just some limitations, that's all.”
“In your job?”
“No. I like my job.”
“What positive forces are at work that make you like your job?”
“I really can't go into it.”
“Does your job bother you?”
“No. I just can't go into it.”
“Do you feel some negative blocks stopping you from going into your job? You see, in Poweressence we know that what a person does is what a person is, not what he eats, but what he does. Do you know what I mean by that?”
“It's part of my job not to talk about what I do. No block on my part.”
“Let's get back to your romantic blocks. Tell us exactly what you dream, because anything you dream you can have. All you have to do is think it. This world is not made for you to fail in. This world, the universe, is made for you to enjoy your full power.”
The colonel went on for twenty minutes describing an affair he would like to have, and was surprised at how understanding his interviewer was. He got to like his interviewer. He even wanted to join because these people promised so much that if they delivered on only part of it, he would be getting more than his money's worth.
“Look, I'm sorry,” he said at the end. “I can't join you or anything like you without endangering my job. I've got to be cleared for everything. I shouldn't even tell you what I do, but you give off such a nice positive feeling that I feel I have to give you some reason.”
“All reasons can be overcome. Reasons are just other words for fear, as the greatest mind in the Western world, Rubin Dolomo, has said. Have you ever read any of Dolomo's books?”
“I don't read. I fly planes.”
“Then why can't you join, and free yourself from letdowns, unhappiness, and doubt. Let us take all the worry out of your life.”
“Because of the plane I fly.”
“What can be so important about a plane that it can deny you the full use of your own life?”
“It's not the plane that's different. It's what's in it.”
“If you carry atomic weapons, you are carrying the greatest negative force for mankind. Did you know that? Did you know that Rubin Dolomo says it is a prime example of power being destroyed by its negative implementation? Did you know that he was the first to understand atomic energy and what it meant to mankind?”
“It's not an atomic bomb. It's more important,” Colonel Armbruster had said. And then he had leaned over and whispered:
“I fly Air Force One.”
“The President!”
“Shhh,” said Colonel Armbruster.
“I won't tell a soul. I will forget it now. I believe in nothing but goodness.”
What the interviewer did not tell Colonel Armbruster was that the essence of goodness was Poweressence, therefore anything he did to enhance Poweressence enhanced goodness. That rendered a promise made to someone who was not part of Poweressence, and therefore no part of goodness, completely invalid. She also didn't mention that the Washington temple of Poweressence collected all such information from the tests.
What the interviewer herself did not know was that these bits of information, if valuable enough, were sold by the local temple to California headquarters, where Beatrice had them filed for future reference.
And what
Colonel Armbruster did not know was that two years later it all was going to be used on him, that this perfect little dream who was playing up to him at his favorite lounge in Washington, D.C., had been taken from his favorite fantasy. Cantaloupe-sized breasts and strawberry-blond hair and adoration. All of it.
“I do have to get home to my wife,” said Armbruster. The lounge was dark. The drink was good, the music was mellow, and Dale Armbruster smelled her perfume.
“Is that lilac?” he asked.
“For you,” she said.
“What's your name?” he asked.
“I never give my name with my clothes on,” she said.
Dale Armbruster looked to the doorway. If he ran out now, ran right out of the lounge, he could make it home safely and stay faithful to his wife and her vengeful lawyer. Of course, if he ran now, he would never forgive himself. He would always remember what he passed by.
“I'd like to hear your name,” he said with a choking voice.
“I'd like to give it,” she said.
“You really think I'm distinguished and not old?”
She nodded.
“And I want to hear your name more than anything else in the world. More than I want to wake up tomorrow.”
Dale Armbruster heard her name in a small motel room he rented for the night. He saw the perfection of an eighteen-year-old body with breasts like fruit and smooth-skinned thighs, and that incredibly willing smile framed by the strawberry-blond hair he had always dreamed of.
She said her name was Joan.
“What a great set of names,” he said, staring directly between her shoulders.
Like all dreams, the reality was not quite as grand. But even seventh place was better than anything Colonel Armbruster had ever enjoyed in his life. Within a half-hour he knew that he never wanted Joan out of his life, knew that he would do almost anything to keep her near him.
But miraculously, she didn't want anything extraordinary.
“I've always dreamed of a man like you. I've dreamed of a man like you treating me special, Dale.”
“You are special, Joan,” he said.
“I'd like to think so,” she said. “I'd like to think you think of me at special times. Not just here in bed. Not just for my body.”
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