HUMAN AWARENESS LABORATORIES WAS “a workshop of human motivation, an in-depth exploration and re-functioning of the coping mechanism through relevant action experiences.”
That was what the brochure said.
To Chiun, as he told Remo while they unpacked in the room they shared, it seemed like a lot of people getting undressed, saying impolite things to each other and then touching.
“Touching is part of it,” said Remo, “Let me know if you see anything.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“It must be thrilling to think like a white man. It is impossible to find what you do not seek, my son.”
“So I’m your son again?”
“I do not hold grudges.”
Chiun was pleased about something. Perhaps it had been the tests they had taken that afternoon. Remo had met Dr. Forrester—in his mind, she was Lithia now—and because he had been overwhelmed with her beauty had been able to do no more than give her his pat, phony little biography. She had scheduled him for immediate testing, and then dismissed him like a schoolmarm.
Even though he was not technically a participant, Chiun had taken the battery of psychological tests with Remo. Chiun had thought they were great good fun.
“Listen to this,” he cackled. “What would you rather be: a cleaner of fish, a soldier, a garbage collector, an artist? Check one.”
“So? Check one,” Remo had said.
“I do not wish to be a cleaner of fish, a soldier, a garbage collector or an artist. I check none,” Chiun had said, and then defiantly had written across the paper, “I choose to be the Master of Sinanju.”
If he had thought that test was funny, Chiun thought the test where they tried to form a batch of small blocks into a large cube was hilarious. Chiun had quickly formed a cube, but one block was left over. With the side of his hand, he had crushed the errant block into powder, and then sprinkled the dust over the large cube. “Done,” he shouted triumphantly.
And so it had gone.
Remo did the best he could, and had no idea whether he had failed or passed. Assuming, of course, that one could fail or pass.
Just then, the phone in their small room rang. Remo picked it up. “Donaldson here,” he said. A cold female voice told him that Dr. Forrester would see him. Immediately.
It was well into evening when Remo entered Lithia Forrester’s office for the second time. She was standing against her desk, her back to him, and as Remo saw her, despite all his controls, he felt a deep longing for her, a longing beyond sex. It was a longing to reproduce with her.
“Sit down, Mr. Donaldson,” she said, pointing easily to the couch. She picked up a sheaf of papers and walked to the couch and sat next to him. “I wanted to explain your test scores to you.”
The blocks they had put together indicated perception and organization. High superior, Remo had gotten, which was a bit surprising because when he was Remo Williams and applying for the Newark, New Jersey, police department he had gotten average. Chiun was right. The muscles of the mind could grow, just as the muscles of the arms or legs.
Then came frustration elements. Remo’s was high. A blotch of something or other showed that. “Your health instructor, however, scored very low,” the lowest Dr. Forrester had ever seen. She leaned into Remo on the couch. “Why do you suppose his frustration level is so low?” she asked.
Her body was a perfume of rare elegance. “Because,” Remo said, “he manages to diffuse frustration onto others.”
“And here’s something extraordinary. Both of you have non-existent aggression quotients. I mean, they don’t exist. That is impossible. Did you make up answers for the test?”
“Was that the one with the lines and arrows and things?” Remo asked.
“Yes.”
“You got me,” Remo said. He was interested. The test had seemed so harmless that both he and Chiun had answered honestly. “I don’t know how you could make up answers to that test.”
“That’s how it was designed. Remarkable. Absolutely no trace of normal aggressive instincts.” Lithia rose from the couch in a swirl of clinging jersey. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “We must talk.”
Remo leaned back Into the leather couch and looked up at the darkening sky above the dome. A hawk pivoted far off, slowly—as if not moving, then suddenly diving. Remo could not see the target but he was sure the target was there. He was also sure that Lithia Forrester attacked like that. Why was it that most women and some men used sex as a weapon? Funny, that he should think about that now.
The woman sat in a leather chair facing him and began asking questions in her best Doctor Forrester tone.
“If someone got ahead of you on a long line to a movie, what would you do?”
“I’d point out to him that everyone had formed a line and he should recognize it.”
“And if he refused?”
“So? What’s one man? Frankly, I might not even point it out to him.”
“Have you ever killed a man?”
“Oh sure. More than I remember.”
“In Vietnam?”
“There too.”
“What if I should tell you that we’ve checked on your records, Mr. Donaldson, and we find nothing. Nothing. You may know that these laboratories often deal with government personnel. Consequently, every participant is carefully screened. There seems to be no trace of you. Not even fingerprints.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
“Mr. Donaldson, you came here and listed yourself as a professional golfer. There is no professional golfer named Remo Donaldson, You say you were in Vietnam but there are no military records of your existence. Mr. Donaldson. Just who are you?”
Remo smiled. It was time to join the issue and find out just who Dr. Forrester was. “I’m the man who’s going to kill you.” He watched her eyes and hands. No giveaway. Just another calm question. Perhaps that was the biggest giveaway there could be.
“Ah, aggression. Showing for the first time. Good. I think your problem is a fear of your aggression. An inability to accept your deep and raging hostility. Why do you want to kill me?”
“Who said I wanted to kill you? I’m going to kill you.”
“You mean you don’t want to kill me?”
“Not now. Not yet. Frankly, I think killing you would be like painting the Pieta pink. But I’ll have to kill you.”
“Why?”
“Because you probably should be killed.”
“Why?”
“You’re a hit.”
“I see. Who decides who is a hit and who isn’t?”
“By and large, me.”
“How do you feel about your hits?”
“How do you feel about your patients?”
“I don’t hate my patients.”
“I rarely hate my hits.”
“How many people have you killed, Mr. Donaldson?”
“How many people have you slept with?”
“Then it is a sexual thing with you?”
“No.”
“What do you feel then when you kill someone?”
“A professional interest in the competence of my craft. I wonder afterwards if my left arm was straight.”
“No emotion.”
“Of course not. I’m the killer, not the killee.” Remo laughed at his own little joke. He was not joined in the mirth and his laughter died suddenly.
“No emotion,” repeated Lithia Forrester. “Why do you kill people?”
“It’s my job. Actually my profession. I’m very good at it, Dr. Forrester. You might say it’s a calling.”
“How is your sex life?” she said, changing the subject.
“Adequate.”
“How do you feel about your parents?”
“I don’t know my parents. I was raised in an orphanage and I didn’t feel all that much for the nuns who ran it. They were all right. They did the best they could.”
“I see. Then you have no recollection of a male image. Describe to me the perfect man. Lie back if you wish, close your eyes and if you can create the ideal man, create him for me.”
Remo nodded and eased comfortably down into the couch. He kicked off his loafers.
“The ideal man,” Remo said, “has a calm within him, a peace that is linked to the forces of the world. The ideal man seeks no unnecessary danger but accepts whatever danger there is, knowing that death is a natural part of life, knowing that it is how he dies, not when, that matters. I see the ideal man capable of sitting quietly for hours, his long, thin hands resting at peace upon his robes. I see the ideal man in command of his craft and doing what he must do as well as man can do it. I see the ideal man as a teacher of someone he loves.”
Dr. Forrester’s voice interrupted. “Is the Oriental your father?”
“No.”
“Did he raise you, I mean?”
“Not as a child.”
“Do you love him?”
Remo bolted upright on the couch. “None of your damned business.”
“Well, for the first time we see aggressive emotion. There was almost no emotion as you spun the fantasies about killing people. What we’re going to try to do, Remo, is in effect to assassinate the killer in you. That other you, that strong male image you never had as a child. We’re going to help you form a new self-image, a positive force. And in your therapy, we will destroy that hostile fantasy. Do you have a name for him? Many people often do.”
“Yes. The Destroyer.”
“Good. Then we’re going to have to kill the Destroyer. Together.” She paused. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to end this now. Time is up.”
Remo stood, straight and balanced. He looked into the vibrant blue crystals of her eyes. Her calm smile both aroused and angered him. He smiled.
“Many have plotted the death of the Destroyer and together with their schemes have been stuffed into dirt.”
“Well,” Dr. Forrester said smiling sweetly, “we’ll see what we can do here at Human Awareness Laboratories.”
And that was when Remo again felt the longing beyond the mere desire to penetrate. He wanted to reproduce.
So be it. Then this was where he might die. Remo gazed up again through the dome, searched the night sky with his eyes for the hawk. But the hawk was not there.