“You’re a bastard. A male chauvinist pig,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Remo. “A male chauvinist pig who’s going to drive you up a wall.”
“I’ll phone but it won’t do any good.’”
“Phone,” said Remo, glancing around the spacious office. Everything about Human Awareness Laboratories was spacious, designed to be spacious, from the large plants in waist high pots, to the roaringly large windows that opened the eyes to the sky and the earth and the trees in between. The young woman, her face still flushed with the excitement of the closeness of Remo, dialed the flat white phone at her glass topped desk.
Remo strolled back to Chiun.
Chiun was absorbing the atmosphere, contemplating the openness of Human Awareness Laboratories. With looking at Remo, he said: “You are a male chauvinist pig. I’ve never seen a more inept approach.”
“I got what I wanted.”
“Why didn’t you threaten her with a gun? That would also have convinced her to call.”
Remo picked up a brochure from a low, polished steel table. He glanced at it and chuckled. “You’re going to have to take your clothes off in front of people. Read this, Chiun.”
Chiun ignored the brochure. “I will come to all problems with their solutions,” he said, staring out the window, absorbing space.
Remo shrugged. He had never seen Chiun out of robes or uniforms. When Chiun bathed, he would sponge himself beneath the flowing robes of his daily garb. When he changed robes, he did so with such precision that one robe was going on as the other was coming off. Remo could never duplicate it to some degree because he had never wanted to.
Dr. Lithia Forrester was in consultation when her phone rang. She ignored it because she was sure the switchboard would shut it off after the first accidental ring. She ignored it through five rings and then, realizing it was not accidental, she answered it.
“I told you I am never to be disturbed during consultations. We are fully registered for three… Donaldson? Remo Donaldson? Well, yes, I’ll interview him. Send him up in fifteen minutes.”
She returned the phone to the receiver with a surprisingly quivering hand and emitted a long, glorious shriek: “He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.”
“Who is here?” asked the person she was with.
“Someone I was trying to figure out how to get here. The one man who could spoil the plan. And now he’s here. Talk of good fortune.”
“Every silver lining has a cloud,” said the person Dr. Forrester was with. But Lithia Forrester was hardly listening.
Before Remo Donaldson was allowed to enter, she reviewed the case alone.
Only an hour before, when he had failed to report, she had conceded Bannon’s death. Careful, thorough, neat, orderly FBI Supervisor Bannon, who had managed to send so many government people to her. Probably dead. And his men too.
General Vance Withers. Dead.
The Special Forces Colonel, a professional group assassin, dead. And his men.
So now, Remo Donaldson, thought Lithia Forrester, welcome to my lair. Welcome to the game of the mind where your brain and your testicles work against your survival. I know what you are now. You are a human weapon. You are going to meet a target that will consume you. She had been afraid when she had first thought of Bannon dead, but she was afraid no longer.
Dr. Forrester could not know that, many stories below, an aged Oriental, basking in the sun pouring through a large window, was thinking also. And what he was thinking was this:
“I have trained you well, my son, Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. Go without fear into this trap of the mind. For as great as the danger, no danger has yet stopped the force of man. Neither the flood, nor the storm, nor the sea. And now, from your people, neither the space to the stars. Go now, the spirit of the Destroyer’s mind rises above the petty schemings of other mortals.”
And to the receptionist counselor who had told Mr. Donaldson “You can go Upstairs now, and don’t forget about tonight,” the aged Oriental appeared to be a cute, frail sort of thing. She leaned toward him and said, “Pardon me, sir, I don’t mean to be nosey, but how do you get your nails so long?”
She smiled sweetly, the kind of smile that got her a car from her father when she was sixteen.
The sweet old man smiled back.
“You are being nosey.”
Upstairs, Remo Williams, alias Remo Donaldson, entered a double door and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever stood near, not like a creation of nature but of the dreams of man.
She stepped forward to meet him. “Hello, Remo Donaldson. I’ve been waiting for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUMAN AWARENESS LABORATORIES WAS “a workshop of human motivation, an in-depth exploration and re-functioning of the coping mechanism through relevant action experiences.”
That was what the brochure said.
To Chiun, as he told Remo while they unpacked in the room they shared, it seemed like a lot of people getting undressed, saying impolite things to each other and then touching.
“Touching is part of it,” said Remo, “Let me know if you see anything.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“It must be thrilling to think like a white man. It is impossible to find what you do not seek, my son.”
“So I’m your son again?”
“I do not hold grudges.”
Chiun was pleased about something. Perhaps it had been the tests they had taken that afternoon. Remo had met Dr. Forrester—in his mind, she was Lithia now—and because he had been overwhelmed with her beauty had been able to do no more than give her his pat, phony little biography. She had scheduled him for immediate testing, and then dismissed him like a schoolmarm.
Even though he was not technically a participant, Chiun had taken the battery of psychological tests with Remo. Chiun had thought they were great good fun.
“Listen to this,” he cackled. “What would you rather be: a cleaner of fish, a soldier, a garbage collector, an artist? Check one.”
“So? Check one,” Remo had said.
“I do not wish to be a cleaner of fish, a soldier, a garbage collector or an artist. I check none,” Chiun had said, and then defiantly had written across the paper, “I choose to be the Master of Sinanju.”
If he had thought that test was funny, Chiun thought the test where they tried to form a batch of small blocks into a large cube was hilarious. Chiun had quickly formed a cube, but one block was left over. With the side of his hand, he had crushed the errant block into powder, and then sprinkled the dust over the large cube. “Done,” he shouted triumphantly.
And so it had gone.
Remo did the best he could, and had no idea whether he had failed or passed. Assuming, of course, that one could fail or pass.
Just then, the phone in their small room rang. Remo picked it up. “Donaldson here,” he said. A cold female voice told him that Dr. Forrester would see him. Immediately.
It was well into evening when Remo entered Lithia Forrester’s office for the second time. She was standing against her desk, her back to him, and as Remo saw her, despite all his controls, he felt a deep longing for her, a longing beyond sex. It was a longing to reproduce with her.
“Sit down, Mr. Donaldson,” she said, pointing easily to the couch. She picked up a sheaf of papers and walked to the couch and sat next to him. “I wanted to explain your test scores to you.”
The blocks they had put together indicated perception and organization. High superior, Remo had gotten, which was a bit surprising because when he was Remo Williams and applying for the Newark, New Jersey, police department he had gotten average. Chiun was right. The muscles of the mind could grow, just as the muscles of the arms or legs.
Then came frustration elements. Remo’s was high. A blotch of something or other showed that. “Your health instructor, however, scored very low,” the lowest Dr. Forrester had ever seen. She leaned into Remo on the couch. “Wh
y do you suppose his frustration level is so low?” she asked.
Her body was a perfume of rare elegance. “Because,” Remo said, “he manages to diffuse frustration onto others.”
“And here’s something extraordinary. Both of you have non-existent aggression quotients. I mean, they don’t exist. That is impossible. Did you make up answers for the test?”
“Was that the one with the lines and arrows and things?” Remo asked.
“Yes.”
“You got me,” Remo said. He was interested. The test had seemed so harmless that both he and Chiun had answered honestly. “I don’t know how you could make up answers to that test.”
“That’s how it was designed. Remarkable. Absolutely no trace of normal aggressive instincts.” Lithia rose from the couch in a swirl of clinging jersey. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “We must talk.”
Remo leaned back Into the leather couch and looked up at the darkening sky above the dome. A hawk pivoted far off, slowly—as if not moving, then suddenly diving. Remo could not see the target but he was sure the target was there. He was also sure that Lithia Forrester attacked like that. Why was it that most women and some men used sex as a weapon? Funny, that he should think about that now.
The woman sat in a leather chair facing him and began asking questions in her best Doctor Forrester tone.
“If someone got ahead of you on a long line to a movie, what would you do?”
“I’d point out to him that everyone had formed a line and he should recognize it.”
“And if he refused?”
“So? What’s one man? Frankly, I might not even point it out to him.”
“Have you ever killed a man?”
“Oh sure. More than I remember.”
“In Vietnam?”
“There too.”
“What if I should tell you that we’ve checked on your records, Mr. Donaldson, and we find nothing. Nothing. You may know that these laboratories often deal with government personnel. Consequently, every participant is carefully screened. There seems to be no trace of you. Not even fingerprints.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
“Mr. Donaldson, you came here and listed yourself as a professional golfer. There is no professional golfer named Remo Donaldson, You say you were in Vietnam but there are no military records of your existence. Mr. Donaldson. Just who are you?”
Remo smiled. It was time to join the issue and find out just who Dr. Forrester was. “I’m the man who’s going to kill you.” He watched her eyes and hands. No giveaway. Just another calm question. Perhaps that was the biggest giveaway there could be.
“Ah, aggression. Showing for the first time. Good. I think your problem is a fear of your aggression. An inability to accept your deep and raging hostility. Why do you want to kill me?”
“Who said I wanted to kill you? I’m going to kill you.”
“You mean you don’t want to kill me?”
“Not now. Not yet. Frankly, I think killing you would be like painting the Pieta pink. But I’ll have to kill you.”
“Why?”
“Because you probably should be killed.”
“Why?”
“You’re a hit.”
“I see. Who decides who is a hit and who isn’t?”
“By and large, me.”
“How do you feel about your hits?”
“How do you feel about your patients?”
“I don’t hate my patients.”
“I rarely hate my hits.”
“How many people have you killed, Mr. Donaldson?”
“How many people have you slept with?”
“Then it is a sexual thing with you?”
“No.”
“What do you feel then when you kill someone?”
“A professional interest in the competence of my craft. I wonder afterwards if my left arm was straight.”
“No emotion.”
“Of course not. I’m the killer, not the killee.” Remo laughed at his own little joke. He was not joined in the mirth and his laughter died suddenly.
“No emotion,” repeated Lithia Forrester. “Why do you kill people?”
“It’s my job. Actually my profession. I’m very good at it, Dr. Forrester. You might say it’s a calling.”
“How is your sex life?” she said, changing the subject.
“Adequate.”
“How do you feel about your parents?”
“I don’t know my parents. I was raised in an orphanage and I didn’t feel all that much for the nuns who ran it. They were all right. They did the best they could.”
“I see. Then you have no recollection of a male image. Describe to me the perfect man. Lie back if you wish, close your eyes and if you can create the ideal man, create him for me.”
Remo nodded and eased comfortably down into the couch. He kicked off his loafers.
“The ideal man,” Remo said, “has a calm within him, a peace that is linked to the forces of the world. The ideal man seeks no unnecessary danger but accepts whatever danger there is, knowing that death is a natural part of life, knowing that it is how he dies, not when, that matters. I see the ideal man capable of sitting quietly for hours, his long, thin hands resting at peace upon his robes. I see the ideal man in command of his craft and doing what he must do as well as man can do it. I see the ideal man as a teacher of someone he loves.”
Dr. Forrester’s voice interrupted. “Is the Oriental your father?”
“No.”
“Did he raise you, I mean?”
“Not as a child.”
“Do you love him?”
Remo bolted upright on the couch. “None of your damned business.”
“Well, for the first time we see aggressive emotion. There was almost no emotion as you spun the fantasies about killing people. What we’re going to try to do, Remo, is in effect to assassinate the killer in you. That other you, that strong male image you never had as a child. We’re going to help you form a new self-image, a positive force. And in your therapy, we will destroy that hostile fantasy. Do you have a name for him? Many people often do.”
“Yes. The Destroyer.”
“Good. Then we’re going to have to kill the Destroyer. Together.” She paused. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to end this now. Time is up.”
Remo stood, straight and balanced. He looked into the vibrant blue crystals of her eyes. Her calm smile both aroused and angered him. He smiled.
“Many have plotted the death of the Destroyer and together with their schemes have been stuffed into dirt.”
“Well,” Dr. Forrester said smiling sweetly, “we’ll see what we can do here at Human Awareness Laboratories.”
And that was when Remo again felt the longing beyond the mere desire to penetrate. He wanted to reproduce.
So be it. Then this was where he might die. Remo gazed up again through the dome, searched the night sky with his eyes for the hawk. But the hawk was not there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AFTER REMO HAD LEFT, LITHIA Forrester sat down at her desk for long minutes, thinking.
Then she dialed three short digits on the telephone, calling one of the rooms at the Human Awareness Laboratories.
“Yes,” answered a bored voice.
“He’s just left,” she said. “There’s no doubt. He’s been sent here to stop our plan.”
“Then kill him,” came the voice.
“Yes, of course. But I don’t want to do it here. Too much attention brought to bear might spoil our plan.”
“Well, do it anywhere you want. Just do it.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Lithia Forrester said. Then she added softly, “Could I come down later? It’s been so long.”
“Not tonight. I’m tired.”
“Please?” she said. “Please?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a sigh. “Well, all right if you really want to.”
Lithia Forrester’s golden face sparkled into a warm glow. �
��Oh, thank you,” she said.
“Yeah, sure. As long as you’re coming, bring some potato chips and dip. Onion dip. And a big bag of chips.”
“I will. I will,” she said happily and long after the abrupt click had died in her ear, she held the phone warmly to her breast, like a schoolgirl with a love letter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS MORNING AND CHIUN AND REMO had to attend their first encounter session.
“Don’t be nervous, Chiun. I want your promise that you won’t let the words bother you. No matter what anyone says. It’s just words.”
Chiun glanced disdainfully at Remo then back out at the rolling hills, as if words could never upset him. Then they both left their room on the carpeted sixth floor where the sleep environments, as they were called, lined a central area called the mobile physical transition area—the hallway—to the elevators. Remo wondered what the elevators were called and was told by the elevator operator, “elevators.”
“I thought it’d be something like bi-directional transition cells.”
The elevator doors opened to a spacious room on the third floor. This was the major encounter room, carpeted on all four walls and the ceiling with a gray woolly material. Long, slit openings rent the gray carpeting to allow fluorescent lights to shine down. Giant pillows formed a circle in the center of the room. Ashtrays of pottery were at each pillow. The group was in progress as Remo and Chiun entered. Dr. Lithia Forrester sat on one of the pillows.
She was not talking. Immediately a balloon of a woman with a complexion of ravaged oatmeal and a tiny baby mouth that spewed venom demanded to know who Remo and Chiun were and why they felt they could walk in late. She said she resented Remo and Chiun, but Remo more than Chiun.
“Why do you resent Mr. Donaldson more than Mr. Chiun?”
“Because he walks in like he thinks I want him in me. He walks like King Shit. Well, he’s not. I wouldn’t let him touch me,” she yelled, clutching her bulbous breasts in her pudgy hands. Stringy, sometimes-blonde hair surrounded the oatmeal face like desecrated wheat. She wore shorts, her belly looked like a rubber inner tube after a high compression pump had run amok. Her name was Florissa. She was a computer specialist at the Pentagon.
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