Dream Thing

“We go to our god! We will row with our hands if we must!” shouted a ritually painted man in Chiun’s canoe, who then rushed at the ancient Korean intruder.

Chiun extended one finger and slashed the attacker across the throat.

“What’s the matter, Chiun?” Remo asked across the distance.

“Nothing,” Chiun replied. His attacker’s head bounced off the side of the canoe and plopped into the ocean. “They are overcoming their hesitation.”

The torso slumped onto the other side, leaked blood into the water, and then splashed overboard.

The canoes were roped together, one after another, until they formed a large raft. Remo took a tow rope as Chiun settled in the shady little pavilion of the now deceased holy leader. It was a smelly place. Chiun dismantled it and dropped the malodorous scraps into the ocean. Thereupon he suffered the blazing and merciless rays of the sun as Remo dallied in the cool, refreshing-ocean, dragging the flotilla to Anuki Atoll.

The canoes were smashed to kindling when the would-be worshipers were safe on dry land. They wouldn’t be leaving again soon.

“More coming, Little Father,” Remo announced.

Chiun scowled at the ocean. More boats were going to bypass the Anuki at a distance that would have made them invisible specks to the average human being.

“We’ll have to hoof it,” Remo declared.

“I do not hoof it, Remo,” Chiun stated, but the headstrong Reigning Master was already running across the ocean.

Chiun ran up alongside Remo. Their feet were barely touching the water’s surface, and they rose and fell with the breathlike rising and falling of the surface.

The method of running on the surface of the water was simple enough to understand. Did one not see insects in streams who stood on the water and flitted from place to place? And yet, such a thing is the ignorant mind of most men that they don’t believe a human being can do what a simple insect can do.

The principle was quite the same. One must simply detect the pressure limit of the surface of the water and not exceed it. Thus, one does not sink into the water. Chiun knew that anyone could be taught to perform such a feat of novelty—even ancient carpenters.

They found just a small and weary band of travelers who had sailed and rowed all the way from Tahuata in the Marquesas. Their passion to reach the vortex wasn’t as strong as their bodies. Still, they attempted to put up a fight that ended when their cackling old crone of a priest got broken and jettisoned over the side.

“This will become tiresome quickly, Remo,” Chiun admitted finally.

“What?” Remo asked. The young Master ceased his stroking. He had the tow rope for the Tahuatian boats tied around his waist. “You’re tired? Maybe you could try some of this and we’ll see if you get tired.”

“I think not. Continue, or the outgoing tide will carry us away from the atoll.”

Soon the Tahuatians were stranded on the small atoll, which had already been stripped of the few edible fruits that grew there. Remo left their few supplies and smashed their boats, leaving only one canoe for him and Chiun to take back to their rented sailboat. Remo was actually sitting inside the canoe and looking from side to side before he realized that all the paddles had been destroyed. Chiun sighed, embarrassed for him under the eyes of the islanders, and whittled a new paddle from the trunk of a strong palm tree.

The stranded islanders eyed the stripped palm foliage as if it were a buffet.

Chiun handed the paddle to the Reigning Master, who began rowing them out to sea while the rabble tussled over their meal of leaves.

“If you’re really bored …” Remo held up the paddle.

“No, thank you,” Chiun answered.

Chiun wondered how long this would go on. Would it take them days to starve Sa Mangsang? Weeks? Or would it never happen? Surely, Sa Mangsang had capabilities that were yet to be revealed.

Would this end, ever?

Chapter 44

Finally, the end was coming. It had been an eternity, this waiting without hope of release.

They were the Faithful of Saraswati, and they had existed for a thousand generations, or so their tradition claimed. For a thousand generations they had been waiting.

When he was a child, Urik had believed in the doctrine of his father and mother. When he was beginning to become a man, he questioned their teachings.

“How can you trust in this tradition, if it had existed for twenty thousand or thirty thousand years?” he demanded of his father. “Legends alter in a single generation—how could our worship be pure since the beginning?”

“The One comes to our dreams and reminds us,” his father explained.

“When? When will I have the dream?”

“Never,” his father said, “for I have had it. It comes only once in many generations. That is all that is needed.”

Urik disputed that. He didn’t wish to carry on the tradition. His family told him, “It is simply what you must do.”

“And if I do not?” he demanded.

“Then the Faithful of Saraswati grow fewer in number.” His father waved at the village.