"What are you saving?"
"I am saying, Great Chiun, neither of us will be grandfathers."
"What is wrong with Poo?"
"Nothing. Remo has not performed as a husband," said Baya, shutting his eyes, waiting for the blow. Slowly he opened them. Perhaps Chinn did not wish to kill him with his eyes closed. But all he saw when he opened his eves was a Master of Sinanju, his wisps of hair bobbing with his head, nodding agreement with Baya Cayang, father of Poo, baker of the village, who now knew he had an excellent chance of seeing the morning.
"Remo," called out Chiun.
"What do you want?" came the voice from the large house, echoing loudly because there was no longer the great treasure to absorb and muffle the sound.
"I want you to come out here," called Chiun.
"I'm busy."
"He still has American ways of disrespect," confided Chiun. "But we will keep it in the family." And then louder Chiun yelled:
"It will only take a moment." And to Cayang he whispered:
"You would think it would break him to give us a minute. I don't know what to do with the boy. Never have. Given him the best years of my life, and now this. Well, we'll straighten it out like Koreans. We'll have a little one into Poo in no time."
"All right," said Remo, entering the room, reading a scroll. Cayang recognized Korean, but there was other writing on it also, strange writing like that in the West. But none that he had ever seen before, and he had seen an occasional American newspaper sent back to Sinanju by the Master himself for the archives of the house of assassins.
"Little Father," said Remo, "I have reread this scroll ten times, and I see nothing of Mr. Arieson. There are Greeks fighting Persians and Greeks fighting each other, there are religious rites, Olympic games, poems, a description of a drunken feast in honor of the god Bacchus, and the payment of statuary along with gold. What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"You wouldn't see your nose in front of your face, even your big white one," said Chiun.
"All right. I have a big white nose. Now tell me what's going on."
"What didn't go on is the question," said Chiun. Remo saw Poo's father. He nodded hello.
"Poo's father says she is untouched," said Chiun. Baya Cayang nodded deeply.
Remo shrugged.
"Poo's father says there will never be a son." Remo shrugged.
"Poo's father has been nice enough to keep this horrible fact from the village. The fact is, Remo, you have let us all down."
Remo rustled the scroll.
"What am I looking for?" he asked.
"I am looking for a grandson."
"And I'm looking for Mr. Arieson. The next time I see him I want to be able to defeat him. Or is this your way of just tricking me into reading the scrolls?"
"What you want is all there. Find the treasure of Sinanju and we will be able to handle Mr. Arieson."
"Now I know you're pulling my leg. You've been trying to get that treasure back for years."
"Without it, you will never be able to handle Mr. Arieson."
"I don't want to handle him. I want to defeat him."
"Only the dead have seen the last of him," said Chiun.
"Now what does that mean?" asked Remo.
"Why have you not treated Poo properly?" asked Chiun.
"I'll get to it. I'll get to it. I'm good for it. What about this nonsense with the Greeks, and the servant to the Tyrant of Thebes?"
"Read it," said Chiun.
"I've read it. I've read it. The tribute goes on for pages."
"And?"
"And I don't understand."
"Look around you at the empty rooms. If they were not empty you would understand."
"If they were not empty this whole place would be gathering dust now with lots of junk."
"It is that junk we need now."
"I don't need it at all," said Remo.
"You need something," said Chiun. "That precious blossom awaits untouched, losing the blush of her youth while you refuse your duty to house and home, and shame us before my good friend Baya, a good and decent man who has done nothing to us but give us his treasure of a daughter."
"I'll do it. I'll do what I have to, but I don't have to do it right away. It would help if I didn't get a runaround with these scrolls, and got some clear answers."
"You got clear answers. You were just too dim to see them," said Chiun. "There's nothing we can do about Mr. Arieson without the treasures anyhow. So enjoy the delights Poo has to offer."
"I'm not giving up," said Remo, and returned to the room Chiun had set aside for him. It was not a room for living, but one of the treasure rooms. The scrolls had been neatly laid out on a pale square piece of flooring. Something had sat on it for centuries, and the wood had become indented even though it was rare and valuable African mahogany, one of the hardest woods known to man.
The placement of the scrolls on this indentation in the floor obviously was some kind of message. But how could a place be a message? Remo rubbed his hand along the indentation in the wood. He could feel the crushed cells ever so slowly expand back from their compression, and he felt something else on his fingerpads. Dust. There was dust here in the four-foot-by-four-foot indentation.
He captured the particles in the oils of the ridges of his finger and held the dust up to the light. It was pale white. A fine white powder. No. Not powder. Marble. Something made of marble had been where the scrolls of Sinanju had been set for him.
He read the account again. It was a fairly typical service of Sinanju. A great and renowned philosopher had joined with a hero to demand an end to corruption and oppression in Thebes. The people were behind them, because the tyrant, like all basically weak people, was afraid to let anyone speak. The people had wanted to be more democratic, like Athens. They had even sent an emissary to Athens to learn their system of democracy.
No one in Thebes was on the side of the tyrant. He could not speak well, think well, or govern well, and to boot he was a coward in battle, something that offended the Greek idea of heroism. However, he did have one thing. Knowledge of the Masters of Sinanju and a willingness to pay well.
Naturally he won, and the philosopher and hero were found dead in a ravine outside the city one morning. It was said that they had dueled and the hero had desecrated the philosopher's body in a despicable way before attempting to return to Thebes, when he fell and cracked his head against a rock. Outraged, the people swarmed into the street, abandoning their loyalty to the two who were no better than murderers. Naturally it was a Sinanju service that had made the deaths seem like that.