"Of course," said Remo. "Fish scales. It's fish scales that did it. For a minute, I thought it was a bullet in my back. I hope the worm and the hook aren't still in me."
"Ridicule is merely another way of saying something is above you."
"Beyond me."
"One should not explain the mysteries of the universe to a toad."
"Croak. Try again. Perhaps if we weren't talking Korean, you might ease up on the riddles." The pain was leaving Remo's back as Chiun's hand worked gently on the nerves surrounding the hole in his flesh.
"Riddles? To an imbecile in the dark a candle is the greatest riddle of all, for where does the dark go? This has nothing to do with the candle and all to do with the imbecile." And at this Chiun was quiet.
But Remo persisted and finally Chiun asked:
"What sense that you do not need has been turned off?"
"None."
"Wrong. It is so turned off you are not aware of it."
"Sense? Sense?"
"When you looked at the guns, what sort of things did you not look at? Things that were of no danger to you, correct? And what was of no danger to you? Do you not know what was of no danger to you? Can you think of what was of no danger to you?"
Remo shrugged.
"Was the desk of no danger to you?"
"Right. The desk."
"Was the wall of no danger to you?"
"You know I watch walls. Like you, I'm aware of walls when I enter a room."
"Correct. But not a desk. Now we both know many walls are hidden traps. But not desks, so you did not watch the desk. Who were the people in the room?"
"The two patrolmen, the two detectives, Ms. Kaufperson, and the corpse. You don't mean the corpse did it?"
Chiun sighed. "We are so lucky, so infinitely lucky that you are alive. You should be dead now."
"Who? C'mon, tell me."
"I have been telling you and what I tell you most now is that your ignorance shows how dangerous these assassins are. They are not seen. You see them but you do not see them."
"Who, dammit, who?"
"The child," said Chiun. "Think of all who have died. Were there not children at the Army post, right in the house where Kaufmann died? Yes, there were. And where was that other victim killed but in a schoolyard with children? And if this is not clear enough for even your dull eyes, how were all these people killed? By bombs which a child could throw or leave. Or with bullets of a small-caliber gun. And what angles did the bullets make into the body? Under the chin and upward, the direction a child uses. A child who could conceal a small gun but not a large one, a child whom bodyguards would only attempt to shoo away, never to protect themselves from. A child who is never noticed as a person, not even by you who was injured by one."
"Wow," said Remo.
And Chiun watched the streets of Chicago go by.
"Wow," said Remo again.
"You guys talk funny," said the cab driver. "Is it Chinese?"
"No," said Chiun. "It is language."
"What language?"
"Language," said Chiun.
"Japanese?"
"No. Japanese is Japanese. Language is language."
The conclusion was inescapable. All white men were dense, as dense as Chinese or Africans. Or the Koreans to the south and even those in Pyong Yang in the north. Stupid. Only Sinanju was a fitting receptacle for the light of wisdom, except of course the fishermen by the docks and the woodworkers and the villagers who lived off the toil of the Masters of Sinanju.
By a process of elimination, Chiun had reduced the world to the Master of Sinanju, who was worthy, and all others, who were not.
And not even all the Masters had been perfect. There was he during the reign of the Tangs who had grown corpulent and lazy, preferring to let others do his work. And one could not always believe the tales about ancestors because sometimes uncles and aunts did not portray with the greatest accuracy the accomplishments of relatives.
Even the Master who had trained Chiun to be Master had been flawed.
The thought came sadly to Chiun that there was only one person in the world whose intelligence, wisdom, and force he could admire.
And how could that person tell his pupil, Remo, that Remo might be defenseless ?
CHAPTER FIVE
The bullet itself had done only minor tissue damage. In a small motel room outside Chicago, Chiun removed it with Remo's assistance. The long fingernails probed into the back. Remo eased and contracted the muscles. His face lay on a fresh white towel and he could smell the residue of detergent. The rug had been washed with an overpowering soap. His breathing was slow and meticulous and steady, to raise his pain threshhold. In this soft semi-sleep of breathing, Remo remembered the earliest training and his first life of hamburgers and sugar cola drinks and a pistol at his side when he was a patrolman in that New Jersey city before Dr. Smith's frameup had brought him to his new life.
He remembered the cool beers and the dates and the suggestions that he marry Kathy Gilhooly, whose father was a deputy inspector and who would be a perfect match for him. And how one night in the hallway of her father's house, she reached down and aroused him by hand, and told him, "When we marry, you get the real thing. I'm saving it for you, Remo."
Save it? She could keep it forever. After he was charged with killing that pusher, Inspector Gilhooly tried to get the evidence thrown out, make some deal with the prosecutor, but Smith's organization was already at work, and Gilhooly had to back off and tell his daughter to find someone else. Remo had often wondered what had happened to her, if she had gotten that two-family house with a husband, the half-carat ring with four children, and the new color television set every five years. A bar in the basement was her big ambition, and maybe if Remo had become a chief, then a summer home in Spring Lake, New Jersey, with the politicians. The Shore.
Remo felt the bullet go. Oh, what great hand and what great eye can frame thy fearful symmetry? He had lost that life and been granted in return more than two thousand years of human genius, one with a tradition of self-power so old it undoubtedly preceded the written word.
Chiun told tales of the first master who plied his fearsome art. How the flaming circle had come down from the heavens and told the first Master of Sinanju that there were better ways to use his body and his mind. Before the written word. What great hand and what great eye can frame thy fearful symmetry? Chiun's hands massaged the wound, and Remo brought himself down farther into his mind where he could feel the blood move in every vein and artery. Yogas did this, but Sinanju was older than yoga, old as the first bands that plucked the wild rice from the marshy swamp where lumbering dinosaurs plodded their last days as crawly little men prepared to take over the world. Was it that old? No, not that old. The inked printed words in all the books Remo could find told him 2,800 b.c.
Old. Old as his heart, which now rested on that single beat, his body not needing blood; Hold. In the dark white light, hold. Still. One with all being.
And beat. Once. Slowly again and up, up from the mind. Up from Kathy Gilhooly, whose white gloves covered the hands that did the job in lieu of the marriage contract and the real thing. "Remo, I promise. I can't wait for your body."
Old. Older than the waking sun. The sun source of all. Sinanju and the rug smelled again of violent soap and the towel of its detergent and he was in a motel room and Chiun clinked a small metal object into a glass ashtray. Remo looked up. It was the bullet.
"Your body did not even catch it as it should have. It tore right through tissue," said Chiun.