Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  At the tiny Yuma International Airport, Remo rented a four-wheel-drive Mazda Navajo and turned to the Master of Sinanju. "You don't have to come any farther."

  "I must come. For I know the way, you do not." Remo said nothing. They drove out of the city and into the Sonoran Desert with its undulating dunes and saguaro cactus, where countless Hollywood movies, from Westerns to science-fiction extravaganzas, had been filmed.

  Remo drove west. There was only one road west. The Japanese film had been shot west of the city, among the dunes. It was blisteringly hot. A red-tailed hawk hung in the sky, searching.

  As they approached an unmarked access road, Chiun suddenly said, "Take this road."

  Remo turned onto the road, and after fifteen more minutes of driving they reached a low corral-style fence. Braking, Remo got out.

  The gate was closed. There was a red Quarantine sign hung on the fence. Remo noticed that the sign covered another.

  Lifting the Quarantine sign, Remo saw the word Reservation burned into the wood. The name above was unreadable except that it began with an S.

  Brushing sand dust off the burned letters, Remo was able to make out one word: Sun.

  "'My people are the people of the Sun,'" Remo muttered. Turning to the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Know anything about this?"

  "I have been here," Chiun said thinly. "When you were thought dead."

  Without a word, Remo threw open the gate and they drove in.

  They passed three domed Indian huts before they were challenged. An Indian toting a pump shotgun stepped into their headlight beam and fired into the air. Remo braked and climbed out.

  "Can't you read that damn sign, paleface?"

  "I'm looking for Sunny Joe Roam."

  The shotgun dropped level with Remo's chest, "You ain't answered my question, white eyes."

  And Remo moved on the man. The pump gun came out of his clutch and disintegrated in Remo's hands. The Indian stood looking at the shards of his steel-and-walnut weapon with a slack-jawed expression. "Where's Sunny Joe Roam?" Remo said tightly. Woodenly the Indian pointed to the west.

  "Yonder. Red Ghost Butte. He went up there two days back. He ain't been back since." The Indian suddenly fell into a fit of coughing. "We think he's dead."

  "Dead?"

  "The death hogap dust musta got him. He went up there to talk to the spirit of Ko Jong Oh."

  "You don't mean Kojong?"

  "Forget it. Indian talk." The Indian fell to coughing again. "Damn this plague. Steals all the breath from a man."

  "Plague?" Chiun said from the shadows.

  The Indian coughed again. "Yeah. They call it the Sun On Jo Disease."

  "Sun On Jo?" said Remo. "Not Sinanju?"

  "Yeah. I ain't never heard of any Sinanju tribe." Then the Indian got a clear look at the Master of Sinanju. "Hey, don't I know you, old fella?"

  "I was here when the Japanese sought to rain death on this land," Chiun said gravely.

  "Yeah. You came with Sunny Joe. You're a good guy. But I think you're too late. We're all dying of this damn death dust."

  "What's the best way to get to Red Ghost Butte?" Remo asked quickly.

  "That jeep of yours will take you as far as Crying River."

  "Crying River. Not Laughing Brook?"

  "How do you know about Laughing Brook?" the brave asked.

  "Never mind," said Remo, jumping for the open car door. "Thanks."

  Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "You stay here."

  Chiun's wispy chin lifted in defiance. "I am coming with you."

  "That's your decision."

  "Yes, it is."

  They got into the Navajo and left the Indian choking on the dust kicked up by their rear wheels.

  The road gave out eventually. The Navajo climbed the sand, found traction for a while, then got bogged down. They abandoned it.

  The sand crunched softly under their feet. It was the only sound in the night. Red Ghost Butte reared up before them like a grounded ship.

  They came to a long depressed wash of sand that had formed a crust and passed over it without breaking the crust. Hoof prints of a horse showed as broken patches in the crust, so they were not surprised to find a horse loitering at the foot of Red Ghost Butte.

  The Master of Sinanju went to the horse and, prying open his mouth, examined the inside.

  "He has known neither water nor food for two days."

  "Must be Sunny Joe's horse," said Remo, looking up. Moonlight washed the eastern face of Red Ghost Butte. Plainly visible on one side was a hole.

  "Looks like a cave up there," Remo said.

  The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His eyes sought the cave mouth and held it.

  "Does it remind you of the cave of your vision?" he asked.

  "Can't tell from down here." And Remo started up. Picking his way through brambles and brush, he ascended until he stood at the entrance to the cave. He seemed to take his time, but in reality he reached the ledge before the mouth cave very quickly.

  There Remo hesitated. And in that moment he sensed a presence behind him.

  Remo whirled. And there stood Chiun, his face stiff in the moonlight, his hands tucked into the joined sleeves of his kimono.

  "What are you doing up here?" Remo asked harshly.

  "I have come this far, but I will go no farther. This is your quest. You must see it to its end, no matter how bitter it is for both of us."

  "You want me to go in here or not?"

  "I offer no opinion," Chiun said, voice and eyes thin.

  "Okay," Remo said thickly. And he stepped in.

  The moonlight showed red sandstone for several yards. When he passed into the dark portion, he stopped, letting the visual purple in his eyes adjust to the blackness. His heart thumped, but he felt a strange calmness come over his mind.

  As his eyes adjusted, Remo began to see low shapes on both sides of the cave and his mouth went dry.

  THE MASTER OF SINANJI stood in the moonlight looking into the cave. He watched the back of his pupil recede beyond the wash of pure moonlight and in his heart bid a silent farewell to him. After this night nothing would ever be the same again, he knew.

  Then out of the cave came Remo's excited voice. "Chiun, get in here!"

  "I will not," Chiun called back.

  "You gotta. I need your help."

  "For me to enter that cave is to die. Your own mother told you this."

  "That's not what she said, and if you don't come in here right now, I'm coming out there to drag you in!"

  His face warping with a succession of conflicting emotions, Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, passed grimly into the forbidding cave.

  He saw the first sack of bones to his right. It was a mummy. There was another on the opposite side, facing it. Two sad bundles of bones wrapped in faded Indian blankets. Farther along sat two more mummies. They reclined in niches carved out of the porous red sandstone.

  At the end of the tunnel of sandstone, whose sides were repositories for the dead, Remo Williams knelt beside a living man, cradiing his head on his lap.

  "It's Sunny Joe," Remo whispered, pain in his voice. "I think he's dying, Chiun."

  But the eyes of the Master of Sinanju were not on his pupil or the dying man, but on the thing in the great arched niche beyond. The niche at the very end of the cave.

  It was a mummy like the others. It wasn't dressed in Indian blankets, but in a silken robe whose cut and color and fineness marked it unmistakably as a kimono woven in the village of Sinanju long ago during the Silla period.

  Looking up, Remo saw Chiun looking beyond him, transfixed.

  "That's the mummy I saw in my vision. It looks just like you."

  "It is Kojong," whispered Chiun. "It is the lost -Master."

  "Never mind him. Help me."

  Tearing his eyes from the mummy in faded yellow silk, Chiun knelt beside the dying man.

  He was well over six feet tall with a strong, weathered face and deep-set brown eyes. Dust
caked his face, and his lips were parchment dry and cracked.

  Placing a palm to his mouth and nose, Chiun tested the breathing. Long fingers felt along the spine and throat.

  "His ki is failing," Chiun said.

  Remo looked stricken. "He can't die now. I just found him."

  A low cough came from deep within the unconscious man.

  Resting an ear against his chest, Chiun listened patiently until a second cough racked the body. Chiun lifted his head. "It is the mouse disease," he said gravely.

  "What's that?"

  "A malady carried by mice when they are abounding. It fills the lungs with death. If he can be revived, he might be saved." And Chiun began to manipulate the man's spine.

  Sunny Joe Roam stirred. His eyes blinked open. "I know you," he said.

  "I know you, too," Remo said.

  "You're dead. Does that mean I'm dead now?"

  "None of us are dead, brother," Chiun said softly. "If you have any strength in your body, draw upon it that you might be saved."

  "Water. There's water in Sanshin's canteen."

  "Sanshin?" Remo and Chiun said in one voice. "My horse. Appreciate a swig."

  Remo ran down to get it, but when he came back to administer it, Sunny Joe took one tentative sip, then his head lolled to one side in Remo's supporting hand.

  "No," Remo moaned.

  "He is not dead," Chiun said, stern voiced. "But we must make haste."

  Tears streaming from his eyes, Remo said, "You told me he was dead."

  "And he that you were dead. But if you would have him live, you must do as I say."

  "How do I know you won't let him die just to save your village?"

  "Because you know just as I know that this man is of my village. I am pledged to preserve his life. As are you. If you are not a good son to him, then you at least will do this for Sinanju."

  Chiun accepted the man's head in his lap. Remo stood up. "What do you need?"

  "Viper wine has always been very efficacious against the mouse disease."

  "Any viper do?"

  Chiun nodded. "So long as it is poisonous."

  Remo went out into the night and down into the desert, his heart a stone. Closing his eyes, he swept the desert with his entire sensitive body. It was night. Snakes would be in their holes.

  Remo walked purposefully toward the first tiny heartbeat he heard.

  It was a mouse. In his anger, he kicked sand toward it. A second mouse led him on a frantic chase through brambles before he saw it was a rodent.

  Remo soon learned to tune out the warm-blooded mice and seek the slower heartbeats of cold-blooded creatures.

  He found a red-and-black banded coral snake not long after.

  When Remo stuck his hand into the burrow, the coral snake struck. Its fangs snapped on empty air, and Remo grabbed its entire head in his hand, dragging it out into the moonlight. With it coiled around his arms, he resumed his hunt.

  A sidewinder undulating along the sand saw Remo approach and tried to slither away. Remo enveloped its head in his free hand and, bearing two twisting, squirming, writhing serpents, he ran back to Red Ghost Butte, scared and hopeful at the same time.

  But in his heart there was a cold feeling that he had come this far only to watch his father die.

  SUNNY JOE ROAM flickered in and out of consciousness as the Master of Sinanju examined the two snakes. Selecting the coral snake, he milked it by holding the head so the jaws gaped. He held the exposed fangs over a rude cup he had fashioned from sandstone, hooking them to the edge. The clear yellow venom dripped for nearly a minute-an agonizingly slow time for Remo.

  Chiun added water and, taking some brambles between his hands, set them alight by the friction of his hands.

  The venom was soon bubbling.

  "Will it work?" Remo asked anxiously.

  "We need ginseng root," Chiun said without emotion.

  "Where are we going to get ginseng in a desert?" Remo said bitterly.

  Chiun looked up. "You must prepare yourself for whatever may come."

  "That's easy for you to say. He's not your father."

  Sunny Joe's sun-squint eyes fluttered open. He saw Chiun. "Hey, chief. How's it going?"

  "I am well, brother. And you?"

  "My time's about up, I reckon."

  "Do not say that."

  Sunny Joe's eyes found Remo's. "I thought I'd dreamed I saw you. The old chief told me you'd bought it during that parachute drop."

  "He told me the same about you," Remo said.

  "What about it, chief?"

  "I did what I must," Chiun said, not looking up from the boiling venom.

  Remo swallowed three times before saying his next words, "I'm not who you think I am."

  "No. Who are you?"

  From his wallet, Remo took the folded drawing. Unfolding it, he held it before Sunny Joe's pain-wracked eyes.

  "Do you recognize her?"

  Sunny Joe's eyes seemed to pass over the drawing without recognition. Then they grew sharp. "Where'd you get that?"

  "It's a police drawing."

  "Of my mother."

  And Remo held his breath as he waited for a response.

  Sunny Joe Roam lay his head back and coughed explosively. "What did you say your name was?"

  "Remo."

  "That much I remember from before."

  "The nuns who raised me said the name on the basket was Remo Williams."

  Sunny Joe Roam said nothing. Remo held his breath, waiting for the man's next words. They didn't come. Instead, Chiun said, "It is ready."

  Remo watched as Chiun lifted up Sunny Joe Roam's head. With a start Remo saw his eyes were shut.

  "He lives yet," Chiun assured him.

  Remo subsided. Chiun held the steaming venom before Sunny Joe's nose and the open mouth. Sunny Joe recoiled, coughing. Chiun brought the brew close again. "This is to prepare you," he said.

  When the viper wine had cooled, Chiun poured it down Sunny Joe's throat, stimulating his swallowing reflex with a thumb massage of the Adam's apple.

  Sunny Joe looked older than Remo remembered. His tall, lean-limbed body seemed to have wasted away in places.

  When the cup was empty, Remo eased the head back onto the low hump of sandstone that served as a pillow. Sunny Joe's eyes were completely closed now.

  "What do you think, Little Father?" Remo asked in a shrunken voice.

  "I am not your father," Chiun said sternly. Then, after a moment and in a softer tone, he added, "We will know by dawn."

  "Is there anything we can do?"

  "If we had a dragon bone, we could make dragonbone soup."

  A strange expression crossed Remo's face. "Yong gave me a dragon bone."

  "What did you do with it?"

  "I put it in my pocket. But it was only a dream." The strange expression on Remo's face got stranger as his hand came out of one pocket clutching a fragment of bone.

  "Did you plant this on me?" Remo demanded of Chiun.

  Ignoring him, the Master of Sinanju began to scrape the bone into meal in the sandstone cup.

  "I don't know if he heard me," Remo said, voice cracking.

  "He heard you."

  "No. I don't think he heard me say my name. I don't think he knows who I am."

  "He knows. All fathers know."

  The last of the bone lay in the cup. Chiun climbed to his feet. Padding over to the mummy encased in yellow silk, he stood looking down upon it. "I bring greetings from the House of Sinanju, O ancestor."

  Remo joined him. "That's Kojong, isn't it?"

  "Let us be certain." And from his sleeve, the Master of Sinanju drew his tubular gong. He tapped it once. The high note filled the cave. And from the mummy came an answering note.

  Chiun silenced his gong. But the mummy continued to ring.

  Remo looked down. At its bony feet, covered in dust, a gong identical to Chiun's reposed.

  "Yes," Chiun intoned, his voice filled with emotion. "This is Kojong the Lo
st."

  "He looks a lot like you," Remo said softly.

  "I have never told you the story of Kojing and Kojong, Remo."

  "No. But Mah-Li told me. Years ago. Master Nonja had a wife who bore him identical twins. Because the eldest son was always selected to be trained in Sinanju, she knew one of the boys would have to be drowned in the bay. Otherwise, there could be a succession problem."

  "In those days," said Chiun, his voice dropping into the low cadences he used when speaking of his village, "times were poor and the babies were sent home to the sea every few years. So the wife of Nonja, who bore him the twins, Kojing and Kojong, hid one of the babies from the sight of their father. Since Nonja was old and his eyes were failing, this was possible. As the boys grew, Kojing entered training. But the canny mother switched the boys every other day, and both received training.

  "When at last Nonja died, two Masters stood ready to become Reigning Master. When they presented themselves to the village, none knew what to do. Should Kojing become Master. Or Kojong?

  "In the end Kojong announced that he would seek another land where there would be no question of who was Reigning Master. He disappeared from the village, saying that should the House ever reach a time when there was no succeeding Master, the villagers should seek the sons of Kojong and pick of them the one most worthy."

  Chiun's hazel eyes shifted from the dead face of Kojing, so much like his own, and seized Remo's. "You, Remo Williams."

  "What?"

  "I know this man's story. He is the last Sunny Joe. For he is a descendant of Kojong, whom he calls Ko Jong Oh. The eldest son of this tribe is called Sunny Joe after the name of the Great Spirit Magician Sun On Jo-He Who Breathes the Sun."

  "My mother said my people were the people of the Sun. Those were her exact words."

  "This man is your father, just as you are the descendant of Kojong."

  "He-he say why he left me on the orphanage doorstep"

  "No, I did not speak of you to him." "Then -then maybe I'll never know..."

  "At dawn you will know or you will not. But in the meantime, there is something you must do."

  "What's that?"

  "Your last athloi. "

  "I thought I was through. I did my twelve."

  "No. There is still what the Greeks in their legends called cleaning Augean Stables. For the Greeks miscounted."