Dream Thing

One of the rules of the assassins of Sinanju was that they worked only for kings, emperors, popes and regents—never for those of a lesser rank. Harold W. Smith was probably on par with the President himself in terms of real power, but without the title. Chiun had long ago taken to addressing him as Emperor, which befitted his station better. Also, it sounded better in the Sinanju histories. Smith no longer tried so hard to dissuade Chiun from using the term.

“So, what are the dreams like?” Remo asked.

“Do not answer,” Chiun snapped. “You would be wise to refrain from foolish questions. Have I not told you of the dangers we face, unique to us, in this time?”

“I don’t see how it can hurt to know what the dreams are all about.”

“It can hurt grievously if it stirs His thoughts toward us.”

“Master Chiun, I have not accepted your theory of these events,” Smith said.

“Have any of my predictions failed to transpire?” Chiun posed. “I predicted a tumult in the ocean. It has happened, has it not?”

“It has,” Smith agreed.

“It has?” Remo asked. “Hey, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work for the last forty-eight hours.”

Mark Howard tapped out commands at his desk. “They’re calling it a storm of interference, or the vortex. The number of lost ships and aircraft is eighty-three at the moment. Missing, believed dead, are more than five hundred. The first report was from a freighter bringing produce out of the Marquesas Islands to Oahu. Within hours there were eighteen ships and aircraft lost. Coast Guard, navy cruisers. We sent in a B-l bomber and two extremely high-altitude drone aircraft. They go in, we lose them, and they don’t come out.”

“What’s that mean—storm of interference?” Remo asked.

“All communications black out in here, no matter what the transmission method,” Mark explained. “Radio, infrared, microwaves, even laser-based line-of-sight, nothing gets very far inside the storm. It’s even interfering with our spy satellites in the metasphere, 350 miles up.”

“Why so many ships?” Remo asked. “Why didn’t people get out?”

“They tried.” Mark shrugged.

“There was a current. A flow of water converging on the eye of the storm,” Smith explained.

“From all directions,” Mark added. “Flowing into a central point.”

“Like a bathtub drain,” Remo said. “He will drink the seas dry, Little Father?”

Chiun said nothing.

“And then destroy the world,” Remo added thoughtfully.

“I think we’re jumping the gun,” Smith said. “There’s no way that can happen.”

“The seas do shrink, Emperor,” Chiun pointed out.

“How much shrink are we talking?” Remo asked.

“The Pacific has fallen 1.8 millimeters in the last day and a half, and the pace seems to be picking up.”

“That doesn’t sound like much,” Remo said. “On the other hand, that’s a hell of a lot of water, isn’t it?”

“The displacement is almost incalculable,” Smith said. “Regardless, the water must go somewhere. The most extreme estimations of empty space that could exist below the Pacific will be reached in less than a day. The drainage can’t go on much longer.”

“It will,” Chiun replied.

“There’s simply no place for the water to go, Master Chiun.”

Chiun didn’t reply.

“The limits must be reached within twenty-four hours, at which point the oceans will stabilize,” Smith declared. “Then we will see what, if anything, CURE should do.”

“Remo must not be drawn into the twilight realm of the Dream Thing, Emperor,” Chiun intoned. “Nor I. We own an obligation to that one. He would take control of the Masters of Sinanju if he can.”

There were no more major problems requiring Remo’s attention—only a thousand minor ones, in every nation. Smith asked Remo and Chiun to come back to New York until they could come up with a better course of action.

After the call was done, Smith was unsettled, still trying to make sense of it all.

Chiun frustrated Smith. The old Master could be inscrutable, and his adherence to his knowledge was admirable, but right now Smith needed that knowledge.

Smith didn’t know if he should accept that these bizarre events were related, as Chiun believed, or simply appeared to be. The bird, the global disturbances, Chiun’s recent vision in New Zealand—each was a unique, improbable planet circling the binary stars of two cataclysmic events: the massive disturbances of the oceans and the seething discontent in every nation.

If they were related, then what Chiun knew could be invaluable—and yet Chiun refused to dispel the fanciful notions of the legend to find the truth at the core. Smith felt like a scientist trying to understand the nature of a comet, but his only eyewitness was a medieval peasant who was convinced he had seen Satan streaking through the heavens.

He summoned the two Masters back from Europe because there was little more they could do beside extinguish minor fires—and because he hoped to be able to have a meaningful exchange of ideas with Master Chiun.

“Chiun’s Moovian legends have no basis in reality, and still I find myself buying into them because I can’t accept doing nothing,” Smith said aloud.