“If it confuses you, how can it work?” asked Daphne.
She found herself in the air turning over and over, seeing Remo beneath her, way beneath her, perhaps twenty feet beneath her. Then she started coming down again. Apparently he had flipped her like he had the man at the gate, but she had hardly felt it, and most certainly did not see his hands. She only realized they were touching her when she was already in the air. Now she was coming down again. She screamed.
But the hands caught her again, quite softly. She landed with no more force than if she had just taken another step.
“That's how Sinanju works,” said Remo.
“It's beautiful,” said Daphne. “It's what I've been looking for all my life. It's dynamic. It's forceful. It's alive.”
“It's a pain in the neck,” said Remo. “Don't step there!”
“Where?”
“Just move over to the right a bit.”
“Why?”
“There was something that could go off under the ground.”
“You knew it was there?”
“It's not a big thing.”
“It's magnificent. Teach me.”
“You'd have to change your whole life.”
“I'd love to,” said Daphne Bloom. “I've been doing that all my life. I changed from est to Scientology, to Sedona, to Universal Reunification. My father was a Reform Jew.”
“How long did you give Judaism?”
“A half-hour,” said Daphne. “I found it wanting. I want Sinanju. I think it's what I need. What I've been missing. What does it cost to join?”
“You don't join, it joins you.”
“That's beautiful.”
Remo realized that Daphne probably joined these organizations to find people to listen to her life. He found it extremely tiring after a few minutes. He also found that if he just said “uh-huh” every few minutes she would keep on talking happily. By the time they reached the entrance to the mansion Remo had said “uh-huh” seventy-three times and Daphne was sure that he was the wisest man in the world.
“You have an understanding that surpasses even my first five therapists,” said Daphne, ringing the doorbell. “You have a—”
Remo found himself suddenly enjoying Daphne's silence. She was smiling. Then she collapsed by the door, but she was uninjured. She curled up into a ball on the doorstep, at first cooing and then stopping completely. Her eyes shut, and she looked as though she were floating somewhere.
Daphne Bloom had returned to the womb.
And Remo had found the substance. He looked at the doorbell. There was a thin coating of an oily substance. He could always take the doorbell, but if they could smear it on the bell, there probably was a larger amount inside.
Remo focused on the door, sensing the wood and brass as much as seeing it. Nothing there. He pushed it open. As he did, a spray mist filled the room. He backed out, letting it settle, and walked to the corner. As Chiun had said, never enter a building through the front. He couldn't dodge the mist, but he wouldn't have had to. If it were the same substance, he could keep it on his outer layer of skin until it could be removed.
The skin breathed like every other part of the body, and since he had controlled his breathing through lungs, he naturally could move it to the outer layer also. It was not something that was done but something that came about through the proper breathing in the first place.
But it was that breathing, the refinement of it up to Sinanju standards, that he was still having some trouble bringing into correctness.
And the second floor had to be safer. He put one foot on the windowsill and propelled himself easily to the second floor, where the window was locked and reinforced. He pressured the frame to crumbs and entered. The room looked like a child had thrown a fit, with glass scattered about and fine furniture broken.
Clothes had been thrown on the bed as though someone were hastily packing.
He heard voices downstairs, strange voices. They were grown-up voices but saying baby things, crying out for their parents. There was desperation in those voices. Remo moved downstairs quickly and found that off the main entranceway was a series of rooms. One man in a diaper was drowning inside a large white tub.
It was not water that filled the tub, but an oil substance. He had found it. The man was wriggling like a sperm and not bothering to breathe. Remo had to reach in to save him.
He let the air become one with his breathing, let his breathing try to find itself and its own center, then quickly plunged his hands into the solution, lifting the man in the diaper out of the tub and then pressing the substance from the man's lungs, pressing down, trying to get the breathing apparatus to work. But strangely, it didn't. The eyes didn't focus. The body did not respond; it was dead. And not from drowning.
Remo felt the substance work in through his pores and he used the unity of his breathing to let his skin shrug it off. He sensed the room and the softness of the air, saw the stillness of the dead man in diapers beneath him. There was a strange sense of onions in the air, as though he had eaten them a long time ago and now they were coming back.
The droplets made ever-so-delicate kisses on the floor as they fell and became small pools beneath him.
The scent of the solution was in the air also. He could not breathe it. He had to stop. Everything in his body began working against it and yet somehow it had entered through his skin. But he was not without resources because the greatest thing the body could do in Sinanju was what it did by itself. He saw Chiun in front of him giving him those first lectures. He heard the voice telling him about the powers he would have if he were good enough. He knew Chiun was not there in person. He knew Chiun was in him in the spirit.
He could see himself taking that police oath when he was a young man in his twenties, just out of the Marines, thinking he was tough because his muscles were tough. He used to punch with those muscles. He had once thought he had power because he had knocked someone out with a fist.
The room seemed to close in on him, but he didn't allow his body to accept that. He forced himself to work even as he fought the invasion of the substance into his skin, fought the further invasion into his bloodstream, fought the invasion in his mind and his breathing and the last bastion of a person's power, that which was nothing but himself.
Outside, Rubin Dolomo looked at his watch.
“I guess the doorbell didn't work. There are seven other traps,” he said.
“Do you think he's stealing things?” asked Beatrice. She found the car uncomfortable. She was in the front seat with the bodyguard. Rubin sat in the back with his papers on the formula.
“You know he might not even be able to make it out of the house,” said Rubin. “When I worked with the witnesses I used only fresh solution because that was the only reliable kind. The traps were set with stored solution. Incredibly volatile. Could send a person back to a past life.”
“If you believe in them,” said Beatrice. “Go inside and see what he is doing.”
“I wouldn't survive. Nothing can survive in there. Plants are going to forget how to grow. Nothing. I have unleashed the ultimate power.”
“Put out that cigarette.”
“I can't. I'm not finished. I need it,” said Rubin.
“The secondmost-ultimate power,” said Beatrice.
“Uh-oh. Look what's coming,” said the bodyguard.
A thin man with thick wrists and dark eyes was coming out of the rear entrance toward the car. He walked easily. He had a smile.
“He should be back in the womb,” said Rubin.
“Start the car,” said Beatrice.
“The powers that negative force must have!” gasped Rubin. “How can he still walk? How can he breathe? How can he do anything?”
“He's going to kill us,” said Beatrice.
