"Whew," Smith had said. He arched an eyebrow, a very severe emotion on that normally frosted face.

"Yeah, wha'?" asked Remo. What was Smith talking about?

"I couldn't see his hands," said Smith.

"Not that fast," said Remo. After awhile you had to listen and observe people to find out where their limits were, because sometimes you just couldn't believe how dead they were to life. Smith really believed the man was fast and dangerous, Remo realized.

"His hands were a blur," said Smith.

"Nah," said Remo. "Stop the frames where he's flailing around. They're sharp."

"You mean to tell me you can see individual frames in a movie?" asked Smith. "That's impossible."

"As a matter of fact, unless I remind myself to relax, that's all I see. It's all a bunch of stills."

"You couldn't see his hands in still frames," Smith challenged.

"All right, fine," said Remo pleasantly. If Smith wanted to believe that, fine. Was there anything else that Smith wanted.

Smith dimmed the lights in the hotel room and put the small movie projector into reverse. The lights flickered into a blur, as the camera whirred and then stopped. There was the still frame. And there was the colonel's striking hand, frozen and clear. Smith moved the camera still by still to another frame, then another. The hand was picture-sharp throughout, not too fast for the film at all.

"But it looked so fast," said Smith. So regularly and consistently had he acknowledged that Remo had changed that he was not aware of how much had truly happened, how much Remo had really changed.