High Priestess td-95

by Warren Murphy

  But the old Bunji Lama simply sat there, smoking. Then, all at once, his gold brocade robe surged up in fire.

  "It is being consumed!" Lobsang cried. "The old Bunji Lama is leaving us. What can it mean?"

  "It means," Remo said dryly, "that he caught fire."

  As they watched, the mummy blackened, shriveled and collapsed into a pile of sooty bones and ash.

  Revealed was a statue of gold, blank of face and holding a sword point down in his joined hands.

  "Look," Kula gasped, "it is another faceless joss. Exactly like the first."

  "It is a sign," said Chiun. "The Bunji Lama has offered proof that the joss of the new Bunji Lama is the true one by magically producing its mate!"

  "Is this truth?" Lobsang asked Squirrelly.

  "Sounds good to me," Squirrelly giggled.

  And at that, both Lobsang Drom and Kula the Mongol prostrated themselves before Squirrelly Chicane, saying, "We are your servants, O Light That has Come at Last."

  With a shriek of glee, Squirrelly Chicane cried, "I'm the Bunji Lamb! I'm the Bunji Lamb! I knew it! I knew it! I have such awesome karma! This is better than winning at 'Wheel of Fortune'!"

  "It's Bunji Lama," said Remo unhappily.

  Squirrelly was dancing around the room now. "Wait'll I tell my friends. Wait'll I call my mother! I'm the Bunji Lamb. And I'm gonna be the Bunjiest Lamb that ever was."

  "This is the greatest scam that ever was," sobbed Kula, brushing a tear from his eye.

  Remo sidled up to the Master of Sinanju and whispered, "I hate to pop everyone's bubble, but I stashed that Oscar in the trunk."

  "I know," said Chiun.

  "How'd you know?"

  "Because I knew you had recognized the joss where the others did not when I beheld the dazed look upon your pale face."

  "Wait a minute! Are you telling me you took everyone out of the room because you knew I'd stash the statue?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you just point it out yourself?"

  "Because I have pointed out every other portent. It was someone else's turn."

  "What about the other statue?"

  Chiun shrugged. "Sometimes the gods smile twice in one day."

  "Great. Now I'm a part of one of your con jobs."

  "No one forced you to do what you did."

  "So what do we do now?"

  "Celebrate the good fortune of our Buddhist friends who have discovered their long-lost high priestess," said Chiun.

  "High is right," said Remo, eyeing the spectacle of Squirrelly Chicane as she squatted down, and like an aging beatnik, began beating out a drum solo on Lobsang Drom's bald and uncomplaining head.

  "SO," SQUIRRELLY WAS saying after settling down onto a divan. "Tell me about the Bunji Lamb. What was I like? Who were my lovers? Did I have a craving for chocolate-covered cherries?"

  They were seated in a circle about the room, on the floor, in lotus positions. The maid had served tofu and carrot juice. Squirrelly was digging into a large bowl of double-peach frozen yogurt.

  Remo sat away from the others because he didn't like the way Squirrelly was eyeing him. If there was such a felony as lascivious gaze, she'd do the maximum jail term.

  "It does not matter what you were, Bunji Rinpoche," said Lobsang. "What matters is what you are to be."

  "Huh?"

  "You are the Bunji Lama."

  "You mean I was the Bunji Lamb."

  "'Lama,'" said Remo. "Get it right."

  Squirrelly frowned at her yogurt. "Llama. Isn't that an animal? I saw a herd of them last time I was in Peru. They smelled worse than wet sheep."

  Lobsang Drom intoned, "The Light That Is, you were the Bunji Lama in times past and you are the Bunji Lama anew. You have always been the Bunji Lama. You will always be the Bunji Lama until you have achieved perfect Buddhahood and the cycle of incarnations is no longer necessary for you."

  Squirrelly brought the yogurt to her firm mouth and let it slide down her throat before saying, "I'm not following this. How can I be the Bunji llama in this life if I'm already Squirrelly Chicane?"

  "Now that you know who you truly are, you are no longer Squirrelly Chicane," Lobsang explained. "Now you are the Bunji Lama."

  "Okay," Squirrelly said slowly. "I'm the Bunji Llama. I accept that. Let's get serious about this. I'm the Bunji Llama. First thing I need to know is what does the Bunji Llama wear?"

  Lobsang Drom blinked.

  "Wear?"

  "Yes. What's my wardrobe? I do get a wardrobe, don't I?"

  "Yes. I have brought your meditation robes."

  Chiun spoke up. "Remo, fetch the meditation robes of the new Bunji Lama."

  Remo got up to go.

  "Walk slowly, Remo," Squirrelly called after him. "I want to meditate on your buns."

  Remo backed out of the room wearing an unhappy expression.

  He returned a moment later and surrendered a small ebony chest. Lobsang Drom set it before him and opened it reverently. Out came a silken robe. With silent ceremony he offered it folded to Squirrelly Chicane.

  Squirrelly took it, unfolded it, and her aging gamin face went slack.

  "Saffron? That's not my color. Do you have anything in burgundy?"

  Lobsang flinched.

  "Her education has been neglected," Chiun said quickly. "It is obvious that the new Bunji Lama, after being lost for so long, suffers from loss of memory."

  Lobsang nodded. "Yes, she suffers from loss of memory."

  "I do?"

  "She must be reeducated," added Chiun.

  "You are a Buddhist?" Lobsang asked Squirrelly.

  "Baptist."

  "It is the same thing," said Chiun.

  "Like hell it is," said Remo.

  "I don't think we've been properly introduced," Squirrelly said suddenly, smiling in Remo's direction. "I'm Squirrelly Chicane."

  "Remo Buttafuoco," said Remo.

  "Any relation?"

  "He's my sister."

  "Sister?"

  "Yeah, that part hasn't come out yet"

  Squirrelly looked blank. "You know, I've suspected that for some time."

  "Good for you."

  Lobsang said, "You know the sutras?"

  Squirrelly looked up from her empty yogurt cup. "Sutras?"

  "Yes, you have learned these as a child?"

  "I have a copy of the Kama Sutra." She looked toward Remo and smiled sweetly. "I know it by heart. Practice makes perfect."

  "From this day forward," said Lobsang, "you must embrace celibacy."

  "Celibacy!"

  "You will eat no meat, no eggs, and meditate daily."

  "I already do those things."

  "Proof that she is truly Buddhist even if she has lost her way," cried Chiun.

  "Look, whatever it takes, I'll do it. I'm really, really into being the Bunji Lamb. Or llama. Whatever. "

  "You'll be sorry," said Remo.

  "Hush," admonished Chiun.

  "Why do you say that?" Squirrelly wanted to know.

  "Because I've been on one of Chiun's little outings before. Everybody eats dung except him."

  "I can see you're really evolved."

  "Well, I don't go around thinking I've lived before."

  "You have," said Squirrelly. "You just have to be open-minded like me."

  "You're open-minded because you've got holes in your head."

  "Remo has lived before," Chiun said blandly.

  "The hell I have."

  "You were once Lu the Disgraced. A Korean and a Master of Sinanju."

  "Is this true, White Tiger?" asked Kula. "Were you once a Korean in a past life?"

  Everyone looked to Remo with expectant and welcoming eyes. He felt like an alcoholic stepping into his first AA meeting.

  "I don't want to talk about it," he said, and abruptly left the house.

  REMO WALKED ALONG the beach. His face was a scowl, and there was an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. Yet his feet left no discernible marks in the soft sand. Le
aving no trace of his passing was so ingrained he was no longer conscious of the fact that he was doing it.

  It was night now. The surf was murmuring in some ancient tongue, and the water swept up to spread a cold blanket of bitter cream on the sand. It would have erased his footprints had he left any.

  Remo had been raised a Catholic. He had also been taught Western physics, which said it was not possible for a human being to outrun a speeding car, climb the sheer side of a building, dodge a bullet and drive a stiff finger into a block of steel-all feats Remo had learned to perform at Chiun's feet.

  Just as his illusions about the physical world around him and his place in it had been stripped away by the Master of Sinanju, so had his religious beliefs been challenged.

  When Dr. Harold W. Smith had hired Chiun to train Remo, he wanted only a Sinanju-trained white assassin who could operate in American society. What Smith got was a white man who grew to be more and more a part of the long lineage of Sinanju.

  Twenty years later Remo stood with one foot in both worlds. He had learned to live with it. He was loyal to his country still. But a part of him was continually tugged toward the bleak fishing village on the West Korea Bay that had given rise to the House of Sinanju, which for centuries before the birth of Christ had served the thrones of the Old World.

  Remo shared no blood with them, as far as he knew. But he was connected to all past Masters through powerful bonds of duty and tradition and honor. Only once or twice in a century was a Master of Sinanju created. And he was the first white man. It was an honor. Remo was proud of it.

  Years ago, on one of their earliest missions, Chiun had told Remo about a prophecy of Sinanju, that one day a Master of Sinanju would train a white man who had died in the art of the sun source. And that white man-the dead white tiger, the stories called him-would be the avatar of Shiva the Destroyer. The Hindu god of destruction.

  Remo had scoffed at that story. It was just another colorful fable told to mask a harsh reality, like sending the babies home to the sea. For a long time he figured it was something Chiun made up to cover his embarrassment over having to take on a non-Korean pupil.

  But things had happened to Remo to make him wonder. He had experienced brief blackouts. When he emerged from them, he found he had done things. Sometimes it was as simple as an enemy lying dead at his feet and Remo having no recollection of killing him. Sometimes it was more. During the Gulf War he had lost several days' worth of memory.

  That time Chiun had tried to explain that Shiva had possessed Remo, and the time was approaching when he would take total possession of Remo's mortal form.

  That day Remo had walked out of the room, too.

  On their last assignment, Remo had experienced one of those episodes again. This time he had a dim recollection of it.

  Neither he nor Chiun had spoken of it then or after. But it had been an awkward, unspoken thing between them ever since. Remo wanted no part of any other life or consciousness. He just wanted to be Remo.

  Chiun, he could tell, was growing more and more nervous about these episodes. Whatever the predictions had been, the reality was much more menacing. Chiun feared losing Remo to the Shiva consciousness. For to lose Remo was to have the Sinanju line end-a line that Chiun was convinced Remo belonged to by blood. Korean blood.

  That was impossible, Remo knew.

  And then there was Lu the Disgraced, the Sinanju Master who had served ancient Rome and through his weakness allowed the most important client Sinanju had ever had to fall.

  Remo had scoffed at that story-until he had met and fell in love with Ivory, a Sri Lankan woman whom he had never met before but whom he had recognized the instant he met her-and somehow remembered. From another life.

  Two thousand years ago they had been lovers, Chiun had told him. Remo was Master Lu and she was a priestess of Kali, the mortal enemy of Shiva. In that life, as in this, cruel death had sundered them at their moment of greatest fulfillment. Remo had moved on. And mostly buried the memories. Until now.

  It had seemed so real at the time. The memories coming back were Technicolor vivid.

  Was he really Shiva? Had he been Lu?

  "Who the hell am I?" Remo muttered to himself as he walked along the sand.

  Out in the Pacific the incoming waves were topped with thin white Bombers. He paused to watch them form, crest and collapse on the sand, as eternal as the stars over his head.

  The waves formed and collapsed. The stars burned with a cold fire. Man was born and he died. Who could say that his spirit wasn't reborn in other times?

  "Ah, the hell with it," Remo said, and started back to the house. One thing was sure. Squirrelly Chicane wasn't the Bunji Lama. That was just another of Chiun's legendary cons.

  Chapter 10

  Squirrelly Chicane lounged in her pink heart-shaped bed eating chocolate-covered cherries.

  "Mom! Hi! It's me, Squirl. I have the most fabulous news."

  "You met a man."

  "Better than that. I met four men."

  "Isn't that a little much even for you, dear?"

  "No. It's not like that, mother. Really. Get your mind out of the gutter. Four men came to visit me today with the most unbelievable news."

  "What? What?"

  "I'm the Bunji Lamb. Or Llama. Or something like that."

  "Squirrelly Chicane, have you been nipping at that Wild Turkey bourbon your father gave you last Christmas?"

  "Will you stop? Will you just stop this instant? Now, as I was saying, I'm the forty-seventh reincarnation of the Bunji Lamb. In fact, I'm all of them-stretching back to the Wood Dragon Year. Don't even ask how many centuries ago that was. And it gets better. The Bunji Lamb is the reincarnation of-rum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-Buddha!"

  "The fat ugly person with the big belly and the long earlobes?"

  Squirrelly looked at her pink nails. "I don't know exactly which Buddha. I guess so. Will you stop interrupting? Oh, I'm so excited I can hardly think straight."

  "Squirrelly dear, if you think you're the reincarnation of some heathen deity, you really aren't thinking straight. Stop being so giggly for a moment and think. How can you be all those persons when you've already told people you've been so many other persons?"

  "Mother, have you ever considered the possibility that this just might be too cosmic for someone who's never left Virginia except to have a secret hysterectomy?"

  "Leave my operation out of this. Even if you accept that rubbish, a body can have just so many lives. It's only common sense. Something you, I am sorry to say, have been shortchanged on."

  "For your information, they proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt."

  "How, pray tell?"

  Squirrelly tucked her legs under her, noticing that she had to pull the left one in by hand. It would probably have hurt except that she was feeling no pain from the brandy in the cherries. She was on her second box.

  "You know that Oscar I earned for Medium Esteem? The one, dear mother, in which I was playing a certain buttinsky older female relative whom I will not name but who bears an uncanny resemblance to your mother?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, it just so happens it was the spitting image of some Tibetan idol or something that the last Bunji Lamb, who was me in a male body, predicted that the future me, which is the me you are currently talking to, would own. Wasn't I wonderful? I had the foresight to think of all that. And I was just a mere man."

  "Squirrelly, are you on drugs? Shall I call Betty Ford?"

  "It's just like you to rain on my reincarnations. You know that brassy know-it-all woman I played in Letters from Limbo? Well, that wasn't acting. I was imitating you."

  Click.

  "That's right," Squirrelly called into the dead phone, "hang up on me. See if I care. You're only my mother for this life. I hope you die and come back as a silkworm."

  The phone rang again. Squirrelly counted three rings and said tartly, "If you're calling to apologize, you're too late. My feelings are too terribly hurt for apologie
s to work."

  "Squirl, baby-doll," came the voice of her agent. "Why would I call to apologize?"

  "Julius! Listen, dear, I'm so glad you called."

  "Good. Have I got a script for you."

  "Screw the script. I have stumbled upon the role of a lifetime, Julius."

  "What's that?"

  "I'm the Bunji Lamb."

  "Is that like a Pumi stick? Because if it is, I'd stay away from it. My cousin Irv, who was in Vietnam, stepped on one once. They had to whack his foot off at the ankle. To this day he doesn't walk. He hops."

  "For your information, the Bunji Lamb is the spiritual leader of Tibet."

  "Tibet Tibet?"

  "Tibet Tibet. That's correct. I have the most incredible offer to go to Tibet and be the Bunji Lamb."

  "You mean play the Bunji Lamb?"

  "No, I said 'be.' Not play. Be. I've evolved beyond mere acting."

  "Hold the phone. Are we talking about a movie here?"

  "A book. A movie. At worst, a miniseries based on a book. I want you to put the package together for me."

  "Who do I call?"

  "I don't know. The government of Tibet, I guess. One of their reps is here with me. A dried-up Yul Brynner type named Lobsang. "

  "Lobsang. Lobsang. The name rings a bell. Is he producing?"

  "He's more of a coach. He's showing me the ropes. You know, language, customs, stuff like that. I already know my title in Tibetan. It's Bunji Bogd. You should see the scrumptious saffron number he gave me to wear. It clashes something awful with my hair and nails, but I think I can fix that."

  "Squirrelly, baby. Sweets. You're a million miles ahead of me. How can I put together a package for you without a director, producer or locations scouted?"

  "Find someone. Anyone good. How about Hardy Bricker?"

  "Bricker? No one can find him. You know, they're whispering that the government got to him because of that assassination movie of his. Maybe he was right, after all."

  "Then try Robert Altman. I don't care. I'm not fussy. I can carry this project. Maybe I'll direct."

  "You?"

  "Why not? It's about the Bunji Lamb. It's set in Tibet. The Bunji Lamb is the long-lost spiritual leader of Tibet. And I'm the Bunji Lamb. What could be more perfect?"

  "This sounds like a high-adventure thing. We may need Spielberg or Lucas. Someone of that caliber. And what about the script?"