The Destroyer - 80 - The Destroyer 080 - Death Sentence by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:15+00:00

Chapter 14

The Mas­ter of Sinan­ju sat in the House of the Mas­ters, sur­round­ed by the yel­low­ing scrolls of his an­ces­tors.

Some­where in these his­to­ries, in­scribed by hand by one of his an­ces­tors-​the guardians of the House of Sinan­ju-​there must be a hint or clue as to how to deal with the prob­lem of Re­mo.

Chi­un sighed. Af­ter many days of care­ful study, he had not found the an­swer he had re­turned to Sinan­ju to seek. It would have been so much eas­ier to blame this on Re­mo’s white­ness. He was the first white ev­er to be trained in the art of Sinan­ju. His for­eign birth, his mon­grel her­itage, ex­cused much of what was wrong with Re­mo Williams, his pupil and the on­ly heir to the Sinan­ju tra­di­tion oth­er than Chi­un him­self.

No, this prob­lem with Re­mo was that he ful­filled the prophe­cy of Shi­va. His weak­ness­es were his strengths. The very thing that made him wor­thy of Sinan­ju was the thing that now threat­ened not on­ly to tear him from Chi­un but al­so to smash ir­re­vo­ca­bly the proud line that was the House of Sinan­ju, which stretched back in­to the mists of an­tiq­ui­ty.

Tired­ly Chi­un gath­ered up the parch­ment scrolls. He would study them lat­er, for soon he must go down the shore road and treat with the wait­ing ves­sel of the Amer­icans.

As Chi­un float­ed to his san­daled feet, there came a timid knock­ing at the door to his cham­bers. Gird­ing his skirts, he spoke up in a tone be­fit­ting a Mas­ter of Sinan­ju.

“Who dares dis­turb my study?” he de­mand­ed.

“It is I, Pullyang,” a qua­ver­ing old voice replied. “Your faith­ful ser­vant.”

“It had bet­ter be im­por­tant,” Chi­un warned.

“Two round-​eyed whites stand on our sand, O Mas­ter. They come from the iron fish. They bear an im­por­tant mes­sage for you.”

Chi­un leapt to the door, but mea­sured his strides so that it would not seem to his faith­ful care­tak­er that he was in an un­seem­ly hur­ry to meet with the Amer­icans.

“For­tu­nate­ly, you have come at a time when I could do with a walk,” Chi­un said im­por­tant­ly as he stepped out of the room.

Pullyang, bent with age, a cold reed pipe in one hand, ex­ecut­ed a full bow at Chi­un’s ap­proach, get­ting down on all fours and touch­ing the floor with his fore­head.

“I will car­ry word of your ap­proach to them.” Pullyang said.

“No. There is no need to ex­pose your­self to their ug­ly big-​nosed, round-​eyed faces again. I will deal with them. No doubt they seek a boon, which I will of course de­ny them. Whites. They are for­ev­er seek­ing my wis­dom. Some­times even au­to­graphs.”

“What are au­to­graphs?” Pullyang stum­bled over the un­fa­mil­iar for­eign word as they emerged from the House of the Mas­ters.

“White Amer­icans val­ue them very high­ly,” Chi­un replied as he stepped down the hill to the wa­ter. “Yet they are mere­ly the names of unim­por­tant per­son­ages writ­ten on scraps of pa­per.”

“The ways of the out­side world are those of the mad. “

“Agreed,” said Chi­un, out­pac­ing old Pullyang with­out seem­ing to hur­ry. It was sev­er­al hours be­fore the agreed-​up­on con­tact time.

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