Dream Thing

A band of less corpulent Scotsmen homed in on the battle, looking worried. They didn’t understand how the slim white man in the T-shirt was annihilating their brethren. They also didn’t understand the little old man in the silly dress, but he was harmless, at least.

“Get that fu—”

“I too have heard enough of your unimaginative foul-mouthery,” Chiun explained as he used the Scotsman’s momentum to steer him into the wreckage of a nearby car. The Scotsman was moving so fast that the wreckage tore him apart. Chiun grabbed the next pair by the wrists and pulled. Their arms didn’t just dislocate—they detached. Chiun stepped among the growing numbers of attackers as the gunfire started. He spun and drifted around the spray of bullets, dancing gracefully out of it. Bullets peppered the other Scotsmen, but the old Korean was untouched. Chiun came up to the gunners and killed them by tapping on their chest. It was a pattern that fluctuated the pulse until the heart began beating wildly and uncontrollably. The victims rolled on the streets as their hearts beat themselves to death.

Others died from quick slashes across the throat or brain-stopping insertions of his spikelike fingers.

Remo glowered malevolently at Chiun’s side as the last of the horde fell over. He was eyeing another band of hesitant Scots down the street. One of them began firing an automatic weapon. Remo didn’t flinch, but he grabbed an iron cover from a sewer inlet and deflected the bullets upward. The automatic weapon ran dry. The band became more worried—and more agitated.

As they began storming angrily across the street, a torrent of deformed automatic rifle bullets rained down on them, knocking one man unconscious and gouging a few others before they fled.

Chiun and Remo moved down the middle of the street, observing the last surviving remnants of the riot police withdrawing from the battleground, leaving scores of dead behind them. The gunfire from the crowds turned on the hovering news choppers, and then a growing chorus of voices began closing in from the side streets.

The Londoners were fighting back. Angry mobs of civilians, young and old, poured into Piccadilly from all directions, brandishing tire irons, handguns, chains and at least one pitchfork. The Mad Scots were overjoyed. The two sides clashed and the blood began to fly.

“It’s a circus,” Remo said morosely.

“Let us leave them to their entertainment. The Emperor expects us to move on to more important things.”

“I’d rather stay and deal with these thugs.”

“In your dreams, bloody American swine!” The Scotsman who attacked was a true classic—he had the tartan sash and the kilt and his weapons came from the antique golf bag on his back. He chose a five-iron for this particular Master of Sinanju, but the five-iron left his hands and went around his neck. It was a fine old set of clubs, and the hand-forged steel shaft should have been unbendable. Sure enough, when he tried to unbend it from his neck, it wouldn’t budge.

They left the golfer gasping for his last breath.

Remo found the folded Post-it note in the last place he looked—in the back pocket of his chinos. There were sixty or seventy numbers on the note—it seemed that many, anyway. How could anybody be expected to poke out that many numbers without messing up even one of them?

“Pork Emporium.”

Problem number two: if he did get the wrong number, how was he supposed to know it? Smitty had reinstituted the system that screened out wrong numbers. Remo was supposed to talk to whatever computer-simulated character picked up the line. Eventually the computer would verify his identity and patch him through to CURE.

“Need to order some pig parts,” Remo said. “Feet. Pickled. What’ll a gross run me?”

“Plain or extraspicy?”

“Plain, of course. Nobody in their right mind would want to cover up the natural taste of pig’s feet.”

“Okay, but plain’s extra. We delivering?”

“Wait, there’s more to the order,” Remo said. “Pork rinds. I need six pallets. Extrafried.”

“Son, ah never heard of extrafried pork rinds.”

“Really? You ain’t et till you et extrafried pork rinds,” Remo said.

“What?” Harold W. Smith asked. “Remo, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t give me that,” Remo answered. “It’s your screening system, not mine. Incidentally, I still don’t believe they’re fake. I can even hear their breathing. Anyway, this thing in England is bigger than you thought.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. The latest news coverage shows the city falling into mob rule, and there are reports of a growing organized resistance by London civilians. What’s your estimate, Remo?”

It was odd—not so much the question as the tone of voice. Smith was asking Remo for his honest opinion, as if the answer would be actually credible. Remo responded by making a genuinely straightforward answer.