Dream Thing

Smith’s lips were pursed tightly. He wasn’t enjoying the taste of what he was about to spit out. “Forgive me, Master Chiun, if I translate your legends into terms more palatable to my mundane mind,” Smith began.

Chiun said nothing.

“Sa Mangsang fell from the stars—could that mean he is an alien being?” Smith suggested. “If he does have a tentacled body, he would, of course, be a god to any people who saw him. Could his sleeping under the ocean be, in fact, a recuperative state? He was damaged in the landing on Earth and must heal before attempting to leave again.”

“He’d have to have extreme capabilities by our understanding,” Mark Howard said. “You’re saying he’s a space traveler who uses no spacecraft. I suppose an invertebrate body would be best suited to withstand the pressure variations that would be experienced in space. The life span must be tremendous.”

Remo made a face. “Chiun’s elderly gods sound downright plausible next to that yarn.”

“But whatever the nature of Sa Mangsang, there is a possibility that some of the peoples of the Polynesian islands did once know how to speak to him and lull him into a deeper state of unconsciousness,” Smith said. ‘It’s a slim hope.”

“It is no hope whatsoever,” Chiun declared.

“What other option do we have?” Mark Howard asked.

“We can go pay a housecall on the son of a squid,” Remo said. “That’s what I should have done at the beginning. After all, we’re old friends.”

This was the part of the story Smith had the most trouble believing. “Remo, it is possible that you met one of the sentinels of Sa Mangsang, not the actual entity? That creature was small enough that you could disable it.”

“I punched it in the nose. It was Sa Mangsang, all right, not his people. He was probably shrunken from much sleep and little food.”

“Yes, that is it, exactly,” Chiun said. “Now he has been feeding voraciously. Think of the human cattle who have been driven to him. He will be ten times the size he was when last you encountered him, when he was barely conscious.”

Remo Williams pictured a Sa Mangsang ten times bigger than the Sa Mangsang he had encountered under the ocean, years ago, during his Rite of Attainment. And if that Sa Mangsang had been drunk on sleep, what would a fully awake Sa Mangsang be like?

“You’re trying to scare me so I stay away,” Remo said when he felt Chiun’s eyes on him.

“You would be a fool to deliver yourself into its power.”

“On this point I agree,” Smith said. “You don’t know what could come of that.”

“But there’s nothing else we can do,” Remo said. “Are we just going to sit around and let all this happen?”

“For now, that is the best course of action,” Smith said.

“For now? As opposed to later? There is no later, Smitty!”

“For tonight,” Smith amended.

Remo shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.”

“I shall seek to learn more from the bird,” Chiun said. “It may yet have more to tell.”

“Yeah, I know what it’s going to tell you about,” Remo said. When they left the office they found poor old Mrs. Mikulka in a state of shock.

Remo gave her a smile. “You look a little flushed, Mrs. M.”

She was wringing her hands.

The bird winged to his shoulder and rode with Remo and Chiun down the stairs to the private wing of Folcroft. “You told that nice Mrs. M. the one about Delores, didn’t you?” he asked the macaw.

“She had a great big—”

Remo’s fingers clamped the parrot’s beak shut. “No, thanks. I’ve heard it.”

Chapter 30

Remo came into the main room of the Folcroft suite in his underwear, and lowered himself into a cross- legged sitting posture on a reed mat. He made less noise than the ladybug walking on the wall.

The old man appeared a moment later.

“Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Chiun made the smallest motion with his hand that told Remo his apology was unnecessary. Of course, he had hoped Chiun would hear his near-silent footsteps, even over the wild-boar racket of the old man’s own snoring. If asked, Chiun would have claimed he did not snore, so what could possibly have kept him from hearing Remo stomping around in the next room? It was the kind of Chiun-like logic that made sense if you would only let it.

Remo wished he could let it. He wanted the comfort of some kind of rationale for what he was experiencing.

“You are troubled.” Chiun descended into a sitting pose on a mat across from Remo, and the movement happened with all the disturbance and noise of drifting down.

“Tell me more about Cho-gye.”

Chiun considered this. “I do not think there is more to tell. You seek to understand the meaning of the tale of Cho-gye?”

“I seek to believe it,” Remo said.

“And to find comfort in that belief,” Chiun added.

“Yeah. I’m having a hard time with this, Little Father.”

“What this?”

“This failure.”

“What failure?”

“You know. My bad judgment call. I can’t stop thinking about what might have happened because I did the wrong thing. I know you think there’s a lesson in the story of Cho-gye that works for this situation. But I just don’t get it.”