Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  "And a son," added Chiun. "The jury's still out on that one."

  Remo lapsed into silence. They were flying in the general direction of the North Pole, which featured only ice and snow and cold and maybe the Fortress of Solitude. In other words, nothing useful or interesting.

  Somewhere in the dim recesses of his memory, he recalled a legend of a Sinanju Master who went to the moon. Who was that?

  "Shang!" Remo said, snapping his fingers. "Shang went to the moon."

  Chiun clapped his hands together approvingly. "It gladdens my heart to hear that one of my lessons has stuck to the inside of your thick white skull."

  "Cut it out. Besides, Shang didn't really go to the moon. He just thought he did."

  "He went to the moon. So it was written in the Book of Sinanju."

  "What's written in the Book of S'vnanju is that Shang fell for some Japanese tart, and she hectored him into fetching her a piece of the moon, figuring if he failed, she was rid of him. So he hiked north, made it to a land of cold and ice and snow bears and, because he was ignorant of the shape of the earth, Shang thought he had made it to the moon. Actually he'd hiked across the frozen Bering Sea into what is now northern Canada. Because it was winter, there was no moon in the sky, and Shang thought he had walked all the way to the moon."

  "How did the story end?" an interested stewardess asked.

  Remo shrugged. "Search me. I just remember the part of the moon. And only because it was wrong."

  "Pah!" said Chiun, turning away. "You have learned nothing."

  For the rest of the trip, the stewardesses tried to convince Remo that although they were Inuit or Eskimos-take your pick, kind sir-they were really just as modern and sophisticated as any woman you could find.

  "Yes," said one. "We have satellite dishes in our homes. Alcoholism. Drugs and even AIDS."

  "That's really sophisticated," Remo remarked dryly. "Congratulations."

  The stewardesses giggled with delight, thinking they were cracking the thick antisocial ice surrounding the strange white man with the yummy, thick wrists.

  So when he fell asleep, they were very disappointed. When they deplaned at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, the entire crew of stewardesses offered Remo a ride to any point he cared to visit, including lodgings in their very own homes, which they assured him were not igloos. Unless, of course, igloos appealed to him. In which case they would build the warmest, most snuggly igloo imaginable.

  Feeling his face shrink before a polar wind, Remo muttered, "All of a sudden, I'd like to visit Africa."

  "We can kayak down!" one squeaked.

  In the end Remo was forced to drag them across the icy tarmac to a waiting rental agent because they had latched on to the cuffs of his pants and refused to let go.

  "We wish to rent a vehicle hardy enough to travel many miles through ice and snow," Chiun announced.

  "And horny Eskimo women," added Remo.

  The rental agent gave them a nice deal on a snowball-colored Ford Bronco with heavy-duty studded snow tires that had chains on them for extra traction. "Pay this man, Remo," said Chiun.

  "Remo! His name is Remo!"

  The rental agent peered over his counter top.

  "Sir," he said in a hushed tone usually reserved for informing someone that his fly was open or toilet paper had stuck to his shoe, "you have stewardesses clinging to your pant legs."

  "They think they're in love with me," Remo complained.

  "They look awfully convinced of that to me," the rental agent agreed.

  "Can I leave them with you?" Remo wondered.

  "No! No!"

  "Just until I get back?" added Remo.

  "Yes! Yes! We'll wait for you! We'll wait forever."

  "I was hoping you'd all say that," said Remo. "Should be back in-" He looked to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Very soon or never."

  "Very soon," said Remo.

  "Yaaay! "

  When the keys were offered to Remo, the Master of Sinanju snatched them away. "I will drive," he said coldly.

  "Why do you have to drive?"

  "Because you appear very tired, and I do not wish you to drive us into a glacier or off a precipice to our death."

  Remo decided that made good sense, so he hopped in back while the Master of Sinanju spent ten minutes finding a position behind the steering wheel that was comfortable and didn't wrinkle his kimono.

  They rattled out onto a road and into lightly blowing snow. For miles in every direction lay the snow-dusted expanse of the Arctic. They were well above the tree line, with not a spruce in sight.

  On the way they passed a solitary Eskimo man hiking through the white desolation, who called encouragement after them. "Go, Juice, go!"

  "You know, if we get lost in this thing, no one would ever find us. Our paint job's the same color as the terrain."

  "Do not worry, Remo. I will not get lost."

  "Good."

  And Chiun did something strange. He yawned. After a minute Remo yawned, too. Chiun yawned again. And again.

  Remo fell asleep in the vehicle not long after.

  IN SLEEP, he was back in the Void. A sad-faced man appeared to him, wearing the baggy pastel silks of the Yi Dynasty.

  "Which one are you?" asked Remo wearily.

  "I am you."

  "I don't remember Chiun mentioning a Master Yu."

  "My name is not Yu. It is Lu."

  "Lu? Oh, yeah, Chiun thinks I used to be Lu in a past life."

  "That is why I said I am you."

  "Funny. You don't look like me."

  "We wear different flesh, but our essence is one."

  "That so? If you're me and I'm you, how can we be having this conversation?"

  "Because you are dreaming," Master Lu said in a reasonable voice.

  "Oh, right. So. Do I have to fight you, too?"

  "A man cannot fight himself. For there would be no victor-only two defeated ones."

  "Gotta remember that."

  "I am here to tell you that while our essence may be one and our flesh different, my blood flows in your veins."

  "How's that possible? You're Korean and I'm American."

  "America was not always. Your ancestors were not always American. Therefore, they were something else."

  "They sure as hell weren't Korean," said Remo. But Master Lu only smiled with a thin austerity, and as his face began to recede, Remo thought his eyes looked familiar.

  Those knowing eyes were the last things to disappear into the Void.

  WHEN HE WOKE UP, Remo was sitting in the back seat and the Bronco had stopped on a block of ice. There was hardly any sunlight, and it was very very cold. A steady wind blew.

  "What the hell?" Remo said, opening the door. His foot touched water, and he withdrew it with haste. The water was very cold. He looked out and down. The water was gray and choppy, in addition to being cold.

  The block of ice was entirely surrounded by water, confirming Remo's first sleepy impression. And it was moving south.

  "Damn it Chiun! Where are you?"

  As it turned out, not in the back, which contained only a wad of coarse, woolly blankets, or under the hood, which was full of cold, inert engine.

  Remo scoured the horizon with his deep-set eyes. To the north lay cold, impenetrable mist and the fresh scent of snow. To the south he smelled open water and blubber.

  Kneeling at the thick end of the floating ice block, Remo tested the water. So cold, it was like touching a live wire. When he pulled his finger free, it instantly acquired a coating of ice, which he knew better than to try to break off. His skin would probably crack off with it.

  Sucking on his frozen finger to soften the ice, Remo returned to the Bronco. He got behind the wheel and found no key in the ignition.

  Growing up on the streets of Newark had given Remo certain skills that never seemed to age. He hot-wired the ignition and got the engine going. The heater filled the interior with just enough warmth to cause Remo's muscles to relax. Th
en the engine conked out.

  No amount of tinkering could get it going again. The cold settled in the Bronco's interior like a frigid hand. And Remo started shivering uncontrollably. It was a mechanism by which the body warmed itself when necessary.

  Remo had been taught not to shiver by the Master of Sinanju, who had pronounced it a waste of energy. But from the way things looked, he was marooned. He would shiver now and when he got bored with shivering, there were Sinanju techniques that ran the gamut from visualizing fire to hibernating that might carry him through this ordeal.

  The only question in Remo's mind was why Chiun had put him in this position. It made the Cretan labyrinth look like a pie-eating contest.

  Well past midnight, Remo was in the fire-visualization phase of his survival plan. It was working. He felt warm even as a night wind howled against the windshield. Windblown water had rimed the glass with a thick coating of obscuring ice. He couldn't see where he was going, even though at this time of year midnight meant the sun was hanging low to the horizon, giving the world the semblance of dusk.

  So it came as a mild surprise when the ice block crashed against something and the Bronco rocked on its springs, while pressing their wet black noses to the windows.

  Remo cranked the window down on the passenger's side and saw that his ice block had nudged another ice block.

  "Could be my lucky break," he said.

  He got out. Instantly his skin shrank over his muscles and bones. The wind was bitter and penetrating. Remo walked over to the adjoining block of ice. It bobbed and fought against his patch, which meant it wasn't land but another chunk of floe ice.

  Remo hesitated. The two cakes were clashing, but nothing said they'd stay joined forever. He looked back.

  He couldn't afford to lose the shelter of the Bronco, so he went back and released the emergency brake. After that it was easy to roll it onto the other block. Remo reconnoitered the new block. It was flat for a hundred or so yards but soon grew vertical. A peak of snow-dusted ice lifted into the star-touched sky, the top obscured by a mist of ice crystals.

  I'm on a freaking iceberg, he decided.

  Remo searched his memory for what he knew of icebergs. They broke off from the Arctic ice pack and drifted south, sometimes taking years. This was not an encouraging thought. On the other hand, when they hit warm water below the polar regions, they could melt into nothing. This was even more discouraging to contemplate.

  From somewhere in the vicinity of the peak, came a low, mournful growl.

  Remo listened. After a while the growl came again. In the course of his reading, the phrase blue growler had stuck with Remo. It was a kind of iceberg that made growling sounds under the stresses of intense wind and cold and water.

  Maybe he was on a blue growler.

  Except there was nothing blue about the ice and snow. It was definitely whitish. Not bluish. Nothing bluish about it. Maybe they were only blue under strong sunlight.

  The growl came again, and this time it sounded organic.

  Remo decided he'd look into the growling. Climbing the iceberg meant exposing himself to high, subfeezing winds, but there was no smarter way to do this. He started up on foot, switched to all fours, and to gain the slippery summit he poked fingerholds into the ice with stabbing thrusts of his forefingers.

  From the peak Remo saw the polar bears on the other side as plain as day. They looked surreal-as surreal as the animated polar bears in the soft-drink commercial.

  Casually they looked up at him with big wet eyes. Remo gave them a friendly little wave, and one, encouraged, tried to clamber up the iceberg after him. He kept losing his purchase, sliding back on his white rump and spinning when he reached flat pack ice.

  When they started to walk around the summit, Remo decided he needed to protect his only shelter. Climbing down was harder than climbing up, even with prepunched fingerholds. Halfway down Remo was forced to slide on his stomach in emulation of the bear. He came up on all fours, still sliding, and skated on two legs the rest of the way.

  He reached the Bronco one step ahead of the loping bears.

  Grabbing the door, Remo tried to open it. Stuck. The lock was frozen. Remo gave the lock a quick knuckle strike and tried again. It came open with only a minor hesitation.

  He slid in, and was pulling the door shut when a huge white paw swiped in, holding the door open.

  Remo slapped the paw. The bear growled. The others advanced, lumbering and curious. They weighed maybe a quarter ton each and started to clamber all over the Bronco, rocking it and jouncing it on its squeaky springs, while pressing their wet black noses to the windows.

  Remo batted at the obstructing paw again and, bonewhite claws extended, it raked the air, narrowly missing his head.

  In that interval he got the door shut and the window up.

  "Great. Now I'm stuck here."

  The bears circled the Bronco for the next hour, testing its sturdiness and making it rock like a cradle. Remo let them have their fun, hoping they would tire soon and leave him alone.

  He hoped there would be time to sneak out and try to snag a fish. He was getting hungry, and because his diet was restricted to fish and duck and rice, polar-bear meat was out of the question.

  Remo was fishing about the glove compartment for something to use as a line and hook when one of the bears-the big one that had tried to climb up after him before-got his huge front paws on the rear of the vehicle and started pushing.

  "You have got to be kidding me," said Remo as the Bronco began creep toward open water on locked tires. The emergency brake was on, but the ice was slippery. The polar bear had his entire weight against the Bronco, and it was inching forward with a prolonged scratching of chain-wrapped rubber against the ice.

  Remo put his foot on the brake. It didn't help much. The bear continued leaning. The Bronco moved forward until he lost his balance. Then he climbed back up and started the comical cycle all over again.

  Ahead, the other bears had dropped into the water. Their black bruin eyes regarded Remo with quiet expectation.

  "Okay, show's over," he growled, cracking the door. "Get away. Shoo!"

  The bear refused to shoo. But it did keep pushing as if he had an intelligence and a single-minded determi nation to push Remo, vehicle and all, into the frigid Arctic sea. Or wherever he was.

  Having no choice, Remo got out, slamming the door behind him like an angry motorist who had been rearended.

  "What the ding-dong hell are you doing!" he shouted.

  The bear jumped away from the Bronco and retreated a few yards, where he began pawing the ice lazily. He yawned, exposing a fanged mouth like a scarlet cave full of stalactites.

  "And stay away!" Remo added for good measure. It must have been the wrong thing to say to a polar bear, because without warning, the bruin started to gallop at him like an express train.

  He was fast. Remo, annoyed, was faster. He took a run at the bear, jumped off the ice and nailed it on the tip of the nose with a furious snap kick.

  Remo bounced off and landed on his feet. The bear recoiled as if shot. Shaking its head, it came again. "You don't learn, do you?" Remo snapped. And let fly again.

  This time there was a loud snap as the polar bear's spinal column broke under the expert kick. Remo landed on his feet, the bear lay down dead and the Bronco teetered over the edge of the ice pack and into the cold gray water.

  "Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Remo shouted, scaring the other bears away. "Damn that Chiun!" Because there was nothing else to take his frustration out on, he walked over and gave the dead polar bear a splintering kick in the ribs.

  He felt better, but it hardly improved the situation any.

  Standing by himself, he felt the cold of the Arctic Circle take hold of him with crushing, energy-sapping fingers. His rib cartilage began crackling with each breath. The air going into his lungs became like cold fire. Remo began drawing it in slowly, letting his mouth and air passages warm it before it could reach the delicate ti
ssues of his lungs.

  "What would Shang do in this situation?" Remo wondered.

  The wind picked up. It blew soft waves of heat off the polar bear's dead hulk.

  Snapping his fingers, Remo got down on hands and knees and crawled under the warm body of the dead polar bear, figuring it would get him to morning even though technically it was still daylight.

  THAT NIGHT, he walked the polar wastes in his dreams. The snow and ice lay like a trackless expanse as far as the eye could see. The sun hung low to the horizon as if it were slowly dying. A wind howled, creating spiral vortices like sparkling diamond galaxies.

  After a time Remo came upon footprints in the snow. He followed them because he recognized them. Prints left by Korean sandals.

  As he walked, leaving no footprints himself, Remo thought to himself how interesting it was that in three thousand years, sandal prints had not changed.

  Remo didn't ask himself how in this timeless place of snow and wind he knew he was in the polar wastes of three thousand years gone by. He just knew.

  Remo found the owner of the sandal prints shivering in an ice cave.

  Squatting in snow, the man seemed to be clothed in snow. His limbs peeped out from a white covering that swathed his body. He was looking down at his naked brown feet.

  As Remo approached, he looked up. "I will not fight you, ghost-face," he said.

  "Good," said Remo.

  "It is not for your benefit that I spare you the challenge, but for the future of the House, which was young when I lived."

  "Suit yourself," said Remo.

  "I have two things of great import to tell you."

  "Shoot," said Remo.

  "First be careful whom you love. I loved badly and the line suffered. You must love wisely or love not at all."

  Remo said nothing.

  "The second thing I must tell you is very important."

  "Yeah..."

  "You must wake up."

  "Why?"

  "Because you will freeze to death if you do not follow my example."

  "What example is that?"

  But the Korean only bowed his head and reached back to flip a fragment of the whiteness that covered his bare limbs over his intensely black hair.

  Remo saw the fragment had a furred snout, black nose and inexpressibly sad eyes.