"Sister Mary?"
Her voice was whisper thin. "Yes? Who is it?"
"I don't know if you remember me."
"Your voice..."
Remo took a deep breath. "My name is Remo. Remo Williams."
And Sister Mary Margaret started. A low sigh escaped her lips. "Yes. Yes. I recognize your voice," she said breathily. She tried to make out his features and, failing, let her head fall back. "Oh, I knew you would make it."
"Sister?"
"I could not be so wrong about you," she said, gazing at the peeling ceiling.
"I came to ask you about myself."
"What could I tell you that Saint Peter cannot?" Remo frowned. Was she delirious?
"I was left on the doorstep of St. Theresa's. Do you remember?"
A wan smile quirked her contorted face. "Yes, I found you. You weren't even crying. Left in a basket and you never cried once. I knew you were special then."
"They say you saw the man who left me there."
"Oh, that was so long ago."
"I know. I know. But try to remember. You saw a man. What did he look like?"
"He was very tall and quite lean. Thin, the way you turned out to be. Rugged. Not in a bad way, but in a strong way. When you began to become a man, I thought I saw some of his features in yours."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know his name. No one did. You were left for reasons no one knew, but they must have been very good reasons. Why cause you to fret and seek the face of your father in every man's face you passed in the street?"
"For a long time," Remo said thickly, "I did that anyway."
"We called you the Window Boy. Did you know that? Always waiting to be taken home. So brave and so sad. But it was not to be. You had to live your own life."
"You never found out who the man was?"
"No."
"Damn," Remo muttered under his breath.
"But I did see him again years later."
Remo paled. "Where?"
"I saw in him a movie theater," Sister Mary said breathily. "He had grown older but he was the same man. I was certain of it. He had your deep, serious eyes."
"What city was that?"
"I'm not sure I recall. Was it Oklahoma City? Yes, Oklahoma City."
"Did you speak to him?"
"No. How could I?"
Sister Mary Margaret lay in silence. Her breathing was steady, monotonous, fragile. Under the fringed blanket, her thin, flat chest rose and fell with each breath.
Remo squeezed Sister Mary's cool hand hopefully. "Do you-do you remember anything else? Anything that might help me?"
"Yes. I do."
Eagerly Remo leaned closer to catch every syllable. "Tell me."
"I remember the name of the movie," Sister Mary said in a dreamy voice.
"That's nice," Remo said, patting her hand,
"It was The Sea is an Only Child, It wasn't very good. It was in color. I much prefer films that are not in color. Don't you?"
"Sure, Sister Mary," said Remo, squeezing out the tears of disappointment starting from his eyes.
"I remember thinking as I watched the screen how sad it was the way it all turned out. I remember wondering if the man knew."
"Knew what?"
"Knew that you had died."
Remo felt an electric chill rip through his nervous system. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. "You knew?"
"I was very sad for a long time. For a very long time I could not get what had happened out of my mind. I simply could not believe that I had been so wrong about you."
"You weren't. I was framed."
Her cool hand squeezed his. "I knew that. I always felt it. But now that you're here, I know it for certain. If you had truly gone bad, how could you be here with me?" She struggled for breath. "Here in Heaven." And Remo swallowed hard. A lump rose in his throat.
"I knew you had died in Christ," whispered Sister Mary Margaret.
Remo swallowed again, but the lump wouldn't go away.
"Lately I had not been able to get you out of my mind," she said, her voice disconnected from the body that lay so helpless and fragile. "Isn't that strange?"
"I've been thinking of you lately, too," Remo said thickly. "The things you taught me helped me more than I can tell you."
"That's good, Remo. That's fine." Her free hand, tangled with rosary beads, reached out for his. "Now run along and play. Sister Mary is feeling very tired today. We'll talk more tomorrow."
"Goodbye, Sister Mary. I'll never forget you."
"Goodbye, Remo."
Remo stood up. He gazed down at the woman who had all but raised him, so shrunken in the dim light. Her breath was slow and measured. Her heartbeat tentative. She had not long.
After a long while Remo turned to the door. A delicate rattle followed him. At first he barely noticed it. It trailed off into a sigh that made Remo's blood run absolutely cold when it penetrated his grief.
In the bed behind him, Sister Mary Margaret, at last at peace, surrendered herself to death.
"SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS this way," Sister Novella was saying. "She had clung and clung to life for so long. Seeing you must have been the scissors that cut the silver cord."
Remo said nothing. He felt cold inside. His eyes were hot yet dry. They sat in the sitting room of the nursing home, looking at the fading rug.
"You mustn't reproach yourself, Mr. Williams. In a way your coming was a mercy. What had she to live for?"
Remo said nothing. Sister Novella took another sip of tea.
"Did you two have a nice talk?" she asked after a moment.
"I'll never forget her," Remo whispered.
"Will you be staying for the funeral?"
"I can't. I don't think I could."
"You're welcome to come if you change your mind."
Woodenly Remo stood up. "Thanks. I have to go."
Sister Novella followed him to the door. "It was nice of you to stop by," she said as if they were discussing a passing rainstorm, not a human life blown out like a guttering candle.
At the door Sister Novella said, "She never got over the loss of St. Theresa's, you know."
"Yeah," Remo croaked.
"It was perfectly understandable, I suppose. The orphanage was her life's work. She was quite devoted to it. And after all, it was where she was raised."
Remo turned. "What?"
"Sister Mary was an orphan, too. You didn't know?"
"No," Remo said dully.
"Who better to understand the wants and fears of her charges than someone who had been through such a loss herself?"
"I guess you're right. Thanks for telling me that."
"You're quite welcome, Mr. Williams. Go with Christ."
Remo walked out into the Oklahoma sun with eyes that saw and ears that barely heard. He climbed into his rented car and drove around in circles well into the evening.
When he got tired, he pulled into a motel near an elevated highway in a ramshackle part of the city called Bricktown and lay in bed, replaying the scene in the nursing home over and over in his mind while freight whistles blew long and lonesome in the night.
Already it seemed so unreal he wondered if it had been a dream.
One thought kept coming back to haunt him: who was the rugged man who had left him at the orphanage so many years ago?
Chapter 19
There had been a hard rain, and the pattering drops had made little craters in the Sonoran Desert. The pipe-organ cacti were looking hardy. Cholla blossoms made amber-and-ruby splotches against the sand, which wasn't so much red as gold in the morning light.
Crying River lay quiet under the hot sun. Sunny Joe Roam sent his horse across its golden sand crust, which made brittle sounds like breaking potato chips under each hoof fall.
At the foot of Red Ghost Butte, he dismounted and unsaddled his horse, saying, "Don't know how long I'll be, Sanshin. You take your ease."
The big horse stood immobile.
Roam spanked its flank. "Go on now, you stubborn hay burner."
The horse remained where he was.
"Have it your own way, then." Roam gave him a pat on the muzzle and started up the butte.
The trail was all but invisible if one didn't know the way. Sunny Joe skirted a fuzzy clump of teddy bear cholla and picked his way up. It was no place to ride a horse. Only bighorn rams and fool Indians climbed Red Ghost Butte, Sunny Joe thought ruefully.
The trail snaked, vanishing and resuming.
"Getting too old for this," he said, taking a rest on a red sandstone outcropping.
Sunny Joe Roam reached the cave thirty minutes later, thinking that when he was young and full of vinegar, he used to run up the butte and not pant for air. He panted now. Maybe it was the damned dust.
The cave mouth was sheltered by a shield of woven reed covered with plucked brittle-bush and ocotillo. Sunny Joe reached into the shield and pulled it loose. Setting it to one side, he let the old musty damp smell wash over him. It was not a bad smell. It suggested caves and death and ancient mystery.
He entered. All light faded fifteen feet in. He stepped carefully into the zone of darkness, then began counting his steps, deviating neither left nor right. He had no wish to tread on the feet of his honored ancestors.
When he counted thirty-three paces-it had been forty-seven back when he was a short-legged boy-Sunny Joe stopped and dropped to the dirt floor. He stared into the darkness. The darkness seemed to stare back. But he knew there were no eyes in the darkness, only hollows.
"O Ko Jong Oh, I am come to remind you of your promise to the Sun On Jo people, whom you founded in the days before the white man and the Hopi and the Navajo. Hear me, ancestor spirit. I seek guidance." From the darkness came only silence.
"I seek your wisdom in the hour of our greatest need, O Ko Jong Oh."
In the darkness something stirred.
Sunny Joe Roam felt his heart leap with fear and joy at once.
"Guide me, Ko Jong Oh, for blinded by bitterness and white ways, I have strayed from the path of Sun On Jo and cannot find the path back to my own heart." The rustle persisted.
Something warm brushed Sunny Joe's left hand where it rested on the cave floor. Like the passing of a spirit, it slipped furtively past.
He turned. And into the zone of light the thin tail of a deer mouse skittered. A chill washed over Sunny Joe's tall, lanky form.
Turning back to the unresponsive blackness, he said quietly, "And if it is your wish that I die in the here and now, I will die without complaint, among my honored ancestors, whom I have sorely let down."
Chapter 20
All night freight trains rattled through Bricktown, their whistles blowing mournfully. But Remo Williams slept through it all.
He was back in the Void and he was not alone. Remo sensed a presence. But there was nothing but blackness all around him.
In his dream Remo called out, "Anyone here?"
No one answered. But the feeling was strong. Closing his eyes, Remo listened for the gulp and wheeze of heart and lungs, but there were no such sounds. Just a feeling of imminence and menace.
Opening his eyes, Remo saw thin orbs regarding him. They winked out like a black cat closing his eyes in a deep cave.
Remo blinked. Had the eyes been real? They were hazel, the eye color of Sinanju Masters going back who knew how long. Something about the eyes made Remo tense up.
Remo padded toward the patch of blackness where the disembodied eyes had floated. When he reached the spot where he judged they had been, he stopped. The darkness before him seemed palpable.
"Hello?" he said.
In response something struck him in the solar plexus.
Air escaped his lungs in a harsh, explosive gust, and Remo staggered back. A Sinanju blow. Nothing less could do that to him.
Out of the Void came a harsh laugh Remo knew well, because he could never forget it.
Nuihc!
Turning in place slowly, Remo wove a finger web around his personal defensive zone. He stepped left two paces, then right three. Backing up, still turning, he protected himself while scanning the dark for his opponent.
But Nuihc, the renegade Master of Sinanju who had been Chiun's pupil before Remo, craftily kept his distance.
"Come on, you rat bastard," Remo growled. "Come out and fight like a man."
A cold voice said, "You must defeat me, mongrel Master, if you are to return to the world of flesh."
"I never got a good crack at you when you were alive, so we're overdue," Remo said, stepping this way and that, wishing he had something visible to zero in on. Obviously Nuihc was wearing black, his face somehow blackened down to the eyelids. Only when he opened them again would Remo have him dead to rights.
As long as he kept his eyes shut, Nuihc was as blind as Remo. Yet he had struck a perfect blow with his eyes closed. How?
Remo listened. His feet made no sound in the endless black plane of the Void. Nuihc hadn't detected his footfalls. Soft as they were normally, here they were completely soundless.
I get it, Remo thought suddenly. He zeroed in on my voice.
Turning in place, Remo slowly eased himself into a crouching position. And waited.
Time passed. How much there was no way of knowing, no method of measuring. Remo made himself as still as a stone. It might not help here in the Void, but the old Sinanju tricks rarely failed.
All the while time dragged by, Remo watched for the cold slit eyes of Nuihc to open a crack.
The mocking voice broke the silence. "What is wrong, whelp of the West?"
Remo kept still and silent.
Nuihc said after a long time, "Can you not find me?"
Remo kept his silence.
"Have you given up, white?"
Remo said nothing. His head turned this way and that, his body coiled like a tense spring. The voice seemed to be changing position, as Nuihc would have to if he wished to foil Remo's ears.
"I will accept your surrender, if you will not fight me."
The Void seemed to reverberate in the silence that followed.
Just as Remo was about to give up, not three arm lengths to Remo's left two cold almond eyes winked open.
They snapped shut almost as soon as they fell on Remo. But it was enough. Lunging forward on the plane of blackness, Remo drove two fists ahead of him, one aimed for the head and the other for the belly. With his eyes shut, Nuihc was a sitting duck.
Unless he had stepped aside in the instant after he closed his eyes.
Doing so was an old Sinanju night-fighting trick. Nuihc would know that Remo knew it. He might hold his ground. Or he might think three steps ahead as opposed to Remo's two, and step aside, poised to strike when Remo walked into his trap.
There was no way to know.
Until his fists struck solidness, Remo didn't know what to expect.
"Ooof!"
Nuihc was driven back a unit of measure unknown on earth. Remo leaped after him and, spotting the stunned eyes lying on the black plane like dropped marbles, he brought the heel of his left foot square on the spot where Nuihc's larynx should be.
The croak of agony matched the sudden widening of Nuihc's stunned hazel eyes.
"Give?" Remo asked, setting his foot on Nuihc's unprotected chest.
"Urkkk."
"I asked you a question, dog meat," Remo snapped.
"I... am ... yours...." Nuihc gurgled painfully.
"Too bad," Remo growled. "I don't want you." And he began exerting pressure on the chest he could feel but not see. Cartilage crackled as ribs groaned. The hazel eyes went wide till the whites showed all around.
To his surprise, Nuihc sank into the blackness. His eyes, comically round in a mixture of agony and anger, were like startled gems slipping into a pool of viscous tar.
Left standing in the darkness, Remo looked around. He was alone in the emptiness of the Void. Nothing happened for a long time.
Then a sound like a freight train
moaning assaulted the great Void.
REMO SNAPPED UPRIGHT with the screeching of steel wheels ripping through his skull. He flung himself out of bed, getting into his clothes on the way out the door.
Frightened faces were popping out of doors up and down the motel facade. And the shriek of steel wheels became an agony of howling metal and screaming voices. The voices were high, shrill, inarticulate. It seemed impossible they were human.
"Train wreck!" a man yelled.
Remo flashed around to the rear of the motel. Beyond was a rail line. And in the dark, noises were piling up. He got there just as the last car had screeched past in a shower of silvery sparks like molten metal. They splashed onto rails that twisted and warped on their ties, rusty spikes straining. They might have been trying to escape what was to come.
Then the roar became a long rumble, and the tracks let go. They sprang like rubber bands, snapping at their welds and sending rusty spikes and railroad ties flying.
Remo ducked a spike flying like shrapnel. It thudded into a brick wall and smoked like a meteorite. Running along the grading, Remo came upon the back end of the train. His first thought was for the passengers. But as he worked his way past the first teetering cars, he came to a jackknifed string of cattle cars. After a ghostly silence, a tortured whinnying came from the cars. And through the galvanized steel slats of the sides, he could see frightened black eyes. The smell of fresh dung filled the night air.
Remo climbed a car, found the lock and snapped it with the side of his hand. He rolled the door back, and inside, a muscular knot of horses writhed and kicked at one another. They began surging and leaping out in a torrent of clattering hoofs.
Remo got clear, letting them run where fear took them.
The next car was another cattle car. It lay on its side. The one ahead was piled up against a fir tree in some kind of sunken arboretum. There was blood coming out of one end. The pungent barnyard odor of dung mingled with it.
Remo moved on.
The middle cars were the worst. They had been literally rent asunder by the sudden compression of the crash.
All were cattle cars, Remo saw to his relief. There were no passengers. Human passengers, that is. He kept going. Sad, frightened eyes peered out at him from bent slats, neighing in their distress.
REMO FOUND THE ENGINE piled into a windbreak of red oaks.
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