Dream Thing

“Since I ordered you to Scotland,” Smith said. “Even then my intelligence was sketchy.”

“Look, this is the point, Smitty. If I’d known what was in Scotland, I wouldn’t have made a stink about going to Sicily first.”

“I know.”

Remo fumed quietly, then blurted, “Dammit!” He kicked the telephone stand. It was polished oak one moment, toothpicks the next. “Just me throwing a fit,” Remo barked before Smith could start asking about the racket. “What else?”

Smith had nothing else. Remo hung up the phone, and glowered at the morning sunlight on the Thames. The view from the Ritz was spectacular. Normally the CURE budget mandated less costly hotels, but this was one of the few hotels that would open its doors after dark during the “Scottish troubles.”

The haze in front of Remo’s eyes made everything look dismal. “Dammit, Little Father, look what I did. The first time I went and flexed my new muscle, and I screwed it up. See, I should have gone to bloody old England first of all, got rid of the minibots, then gone to Sicily. Just like Smitty wanted me to do.”

“This would have accomplished what?” Chiun asked, his voice rising like a song.

“Those crazy Scottish guys at the castle were going to open up those cans and dump whatever was in them on the world.”

“But they did not.”

“It was too damn close. If I would have listened to Smitty, it wouldn’t have been so close.”

“What of the Sicilian criminal?”

“He’d have kept. Besides, the Sicilians are fighting for control again. I saw it on the airport TV in France. They’re all up in arms again, so what good did getting rid of the don do?”

“He would have kept murdering the people, which you went to stop. You did stop it. It is satisfying to see you follow through with your intentions.”

“That doesn’t take the situation in Scotland into account. Chiun, what if I am too late next time?”

“You will never know,” Chiun answered flatly. “You ask me to assure you that you will never second-guess yourself into witnessing failure? Remo, you will achieve all your least-desired goals if you allow the nuggets of doubt to ferment. That is the path of ruin.”

“What, thinking things through?”

“Thoughtless thought. Pointless consideration.”

“What makes thinking about something thoughtless?” Remo demanded.

“When it is not constructive?”

Remo tried to make sense of it. “Whatever.”

“Pay heed, hireling!” Chiun barked. “I will tell you of Master Cho-gye.”

Remo gave the Thames the evil eye and combed his memory for Master Cho-gye. “Worked for the Japanese a lot? Suspected of letting one of the Sinanju hand gestures slip?”

“Yes. Cho-gye denies this failing in the scrolls, but he protests his innocence too adroitly, and the spoken history has more to say of Cho-gye than his written record. I suspect he is guilty of revealing this secret. What is more, that was not his only failing. Master Cho-gye was—” Chiun cocked his head “—too careful.”

“Too careful. Thanks for the advice. Good story.”

“He was compelled to caution to a ruinous degree. A keeper of strict records and a writer of unambiguous words. Cho-gye was a Master who was bound by the ideals of the perception of perfection. It was he who once wrote of the need to document all the Sinanju method in the scrolls.”

“Come on—not really. A how-to manual?”

“Exactly. A ridiculous notion.”

“Sure. You could put some of the stuff into writing, I suppose. But only a fraction of it would really be learnable from a book. Cho-gye must have known that if he was a true Master, right?”

“Yes, and yet his desire for order compelled him—it is believed—to actually perpetrate this fallacy. If this is so, and if these pages were once stolen from him—”

“Bam—seventeen centuries later you have Bruce Lee.”

“And worse still, Mannix movies.”

“You mean Matrix?”

“The silly films with the Keanu actor.”

“That narrows it down to about a hundred flicks. But yeah, I think you mean Matrix.”

“His were not the first or last secrets stolen from us. The point to be learned is that Cho-gye’s need for order compelled him to take foolish steps.”

Remo’s mood darkened again. “I see.”

“You do not.”

“I got it, okay? Remo has to go prove just how bright as a button he is and the world almost gets a loose WMD as a result.”

“You see nothing. You think I have delivered the morale of the account so quickly? It takes more words than that to dispatch my message into your obscenely large Caucasoid brain pan. Listen.”

Remo listened.

“Cho-gye was a skilled Master, and yet he might have been a better clerk, for he codified his employment terms to such a degree that emperors became reluctant to bargain with him. Codify means he wrote out his contracts to an unwarranted length. He would negotiate for weeks or months. For Cho-gye there was no such thing as a simple payment for a simple task completed.”

“Look who’s talking.”