"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 dialled 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.
"How do you feel about that, Remo?" Dr. Forrester asked.
Remo shrugged and sat down. "Am I supposed to feel something?"
"I hate you," said Florissa. "I hate your maleness. You think you're so handsome everyone wants you."
"What do you feel, Remo?" asked Dr. Forrester.
"I think this is silly."
Florissa began to cry, as though her heavy mascara crop needed watering. Her face now looked as if it should be condemned by the health department.
Florissa said she felt rejected. The other members of the group, except Dr. Forrester and someone else, went to her, put their hands on her back and face and began patting. They intoned that she was wanted and should not feel rejected. They told her she was loved. She had done beautifully. She had given of herself. She had given the entire group a beautiful moment.
"He doesn't think so," said Florissa. "He thinks I'm ugly. He doesn't want me."
Remo glanced briefly at the other member of the group who had not joined in the group consolation of Florissa. He was a huge man, not in height but in girth, weighing perhaps 450 pounds. He was as black as the last midnight of the world but his face, although enpuffed by billowing fat, remained strong. He reminded Remo of a great black King. He was so encumbered by weight he breathed heavily just to sit upright. As Remo watched, he kept spraying something into his mouth with a little rubber ball and a plastic tube device. It was for asthma. His black eyes burned as they looked over the apparatus at Remo. Formidable, Remo thought. Formidable.
Remo looked for Chiun, worried about what he might do. And then Remo blinked. Chiun had joined the group, and he was massaging Florissa's back. He motioned the other members away, then working his delicate hands up and down her spine, he intoned: "You are the flower of all men's longing. You are graciousness flowing softly like the murmur of love from man to woman and from woman to man. You are splendour of your kind, a jewel of rare and exquisite elegance. You are beautiful. You are woman."
Remo saw Tubbo lift her mascara-smeared puss. She was beaming. "I feel loved," she said.
"You are loved because you are loveable," said Chiun, "a precious loved flower."