"Before that," Naomi went on brittley, "I did fieldwork. You probably never heard of the Moomba tribe."
"Not me. I can't even do the mambo."
"They were a culturally isolated group of hunter-gatherers discovered in the Philippines. I was the first woman-the first person, really-to be admitted into the Moomba secret rituals."
"Oh, yeah?" Remo said, interest flickering in his voice. "What was it like?"
"I was hoping you wouldn't ask," she said, picking through his chest hair. "Do you know in lower primates what I'm doing now would be the postcopulation checking for lice?"
"No, and I wish I was still in ignorance of that arresting fact."
"There are a lot of carryovers from primate behavior."
"Tell me about the rituals."
"Well, I've never told anyone this," Naomi said, looking up at him. "I refused to write a monograph about it. The head of the anthropology department at my last teaching position thought I had become initiated into some kind of primitive magic society, but it wasn't anything like that. I was a young, idealistic anthropologist then. I guess I couldn't get along in the modern world that well. I thought doing fieldwork with primitive cultures, which I had more empathy for, would work for me."
"Didn't, huh?"
"It took six months to gain the confidence of the Moomba tribe. Then one night we went into the rain forest to this circle of banyan trees. We all got naked together."
"Group sex?"
"I wish. Starting with the chief, we all took turns squatting in the center of the circle and . . . defecating into shallow wooden bowls."
"Sounds like that would be worth six months of preparation, yeah," Remo said dryly.
"That wasn't the worst of it. When everyone was done-and that included me-the chief took a so-called magic stick and measured each stool. Mine was the largest."
"Congratulations. Did you win a prize?"
"You might say so. They presented me with the magic stick and explained that I was now the consecrated measurer of stools."
"You lucky anthropologist, you. What happened after that?"
"That was it. That time. At the next meeting of the society, we did the same thing, only I did the measuring. Then we all sat around discussing the relative merits of one another's turds. Oh, God, this sounds so ridiculous now."
"Now?" Remo asked.
"I had gotten myself inducted into a primitive shit-appreciation society. That's all they did. Measure and discuss stools. When they got bored with that, they discussed color and texture and firmness of stools. Not to mention legendary stools of their ancestors. It was depressing. For years anthropologists had been speculating on the probable meaning of the ritual. It would have made my reputation, but I was too ashamed to publish my findings."
"I can see where you might be," Remo said, blank-faced.
"I was crushed. I had idealized these people as closer to nature than civilized people, imbued with elemental wisdom, and all that. And for recreation, they played with their feces like toddlers. That was it. I gave up fieldwork and ended up at U Mass with the other unemployable academics.
"Well, your story explains one thing," Remo remarked.
"What's that?"
"Why you keep trying to measure me," Remo said. "Must be a carryover from your primate ancestor experiences."
Naomi Vanderkloot had no answer to that, and Remo smiled for the first time that day.
His smile lived as long as it took him to inhale, for he happened to glance through the fern-choked window and saw a silent figure pass on the street like a figment from a dream.
Seeing the color seep from Remo's face, Naomi gasped. "What is it? What do you see?"
"A ghost," Remo said, reaching for his clothes. "As yellow and wrinkled as a raisin, and coming up your walk."
The door chimes rang and Naomi frantically scrambled for her clothes. She and Remo were dressed by the time the chimes sounded a third time. Before there could be a fourth, the rip-squeal of tortured hinges told them that they needn't bother to answer the door. It was open.
The Master of Sinanju had decided that he would not kill the woman known as Naomi Vanderkloot immediately. First he would question her about the source of her knowledge of Remo. The Nero-like Ransome had not considered that an important matter, but the Master of Sinanju knew that Smith would have made it a priority. And so would Chiun, who considered himself to be still working for Smith.
When the woman did not bother to answer the front bell, even though the sound of her respiration came clearly through the thick oval-windowed door, Chiun decided not to bother with the door. He sent it inward with a short-armed punch and stepped over it, careful not to injure his sandals on the broken glass. A thin-faced woman with a long nose peered around a doorway molding. Her mouth flew open and she cried, "It's him! The Mongoloid!"
"Still your tongue. I am no horse Mongol come to loot and pillage. I am Korean."
"That's what I said. A Mongoloid. Do you know you carry Japanese genes?"
Chiun's eyes made walnuts at the base insult. Before he could speak, another face joined hers at the door. And this time it was Chiun s mouth that flew open in surprise.
"Remo!" he gasped.
The pair came out of the room. They walked out with their round white eyes even rounder than normal, giving them, to Chiun's eyes, comically identical expressions. The girl cowered behind Remo, as if for protection.
"You're Chiun, aren't you?" Remo asked in an uncertain voice.
"No. I am not Chiun," the Master of Sinanju snapped. Even for Remo, it was a stupid question. But to Chiun's amazement, the retort did not bring a like response. Instead, Remo descended into imbecility.
"Well," he said, "whatever your name is, I thought you were dead."
"Who told you that?" Chiun demanded.
"Nobody. I saw it in a dream."
"I have been in Sinanju. And why are you not in prison?"
"You know about that? Then you do know me?"
"Certainly I know you. You are Remo." Chiun hesitated. His slit eyes narrowed. Had it happened again? The thing he most dreaded? Had the spirit of Shiva once again supplanted Remo's true personality? But no, his face lacked the stern demonic cast. And he was babbling. Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction, would never babble. Still, something was amiss.
"So you hear me, O Shatterer of Worlds?" he asked loudly.
Remo and the white woman looked at one another and then behind themselves. Seeing nothing, they returned their stupid gazes to the Master of Sinanju. "Who are you talking to?" Remo asked.
"I wish to speak with Shiva, the Destroyer."