"A plague. Of course."
Remo looked interested. "Locusts?"
"A plague. More I cannot say until I have stood amid the terrible yellow stalks that have conquered the white world."
"Are we talking about corn?"
"I am talking about corn. You are only listening."
The helicopter descended upon a ruined cornfield, and Chiun stepped out. Standing with legs apart, he girded his kimono skirts and surveyed the damage.
Remo got out on the other side, ducking under the still-turning main rotor. It made his short dark hair ripple anxiously.
Not a cornstalk was standing. The ground was littered with immature yellow kernels and shredded golden cornsilk. The air smelled of fresh-picked corn.
Remo inhaled it with pleasure. Chiun cast a disapproving eye in his direction. Remo had developed a taste for corn a year or so back, something Chiun violently disapproved of. No grain but pure white rice was permitted in the Sinanju diet. Remo had protested that there was nothing wrong with corn.
"I ate some and didn't get sick," he had said. "American Indians eat it all the time."
"I care not with what the red man filled his lazy belly," Chiun had replied. "You are Sinanju. You are of the East now. Not of the West. You are forbidden corn."
"According to the best experts, American Indians came from Asia. They're a mix of Mongols, Chinese and Koreans."
"South Koreans, perhaps," sniffed Chiun, whose ancestors came from the cold, forbidding north. "Our blood is northern. We do not pollute it with yellow grains."
And that had been the end of the discussion.
As they stood on the black Iowa loam, Remo decided to pick up the argument. "I don't see what's so terrible about corn," he muttered.
Chiun considered for a time. Whether he was considering Remo's question or the fragrant desolation about him wasn't clear at first. Finally, he spoke. "It is too sweet."
"It's a nice change of pace from rice," Remo said.
"Rice is sweeter than corn. Rice is sweet in a clean way. Corn is heavy and starchy and honey sweet."
"Nothing wrong with honey," remarked Remo, kicking at a well-chewed ear of corn.
"Honey is permissible in tea. You would not honey your rice."
"No," Remo admitted.
They walked. Remo picked up pieces of fallen cornstalks and examined them. Chiun's hazel eyes raked the surroundings, taking everything in. He seemed uninterested in the details.
"No twister did this," Remo remarked.
Chiun nodded sagely. "A plague. It has all the earmarks of a plague."
"Speaking of ears," said Remo, "I still don't see what's so terrible about corn."
"Your foolish question reminds me of Master Kokmul."
Remo made a thinking face. "Kokmul. I don't know him."
"He lived long ago. But you and he would have enjoyed one another's company," said Chiun.
Remo brightened. "How's that?"
"He was very much like you-foolish."
Remo's shoulders fell.
They continued walking.
"Kokmul lived after the unthinking Columbus came to the so-called New World and brought back to Europe the pestilence called corn," Chiun said slowly, his eyes roving over the fields as if expecting the dead corn to rear up and jump them.
"Pestilence?"
"Corn grew in the Spain of the spend-thrift Isabella, from there spreading east and west until it reached Cathay," said Chiun in a doleful tone.
"China, huh? Funny, I never saw corn in Korea."
"Corn did come to Korea, thanks to Kokmul the Foolish. But it was cast out by his successor."
"I guess I'm about to hear another legend of Sinanju," said Remo, his feet tramping corn leaves without making them rustle.
"Then listen well, for this is a lesson the House cannot afford to learn twice."
Chiun's voice became low and grim. "In the days of Kokmul, there was work in Cathay. The nature of this work was unimportant. It is only important to know that from time to time, Kokmul ventured north of Sinanju on foot to ford the river known today as the Yalu and performed certain services for a certain prince of Cathay.
"On one occasion, Kokmul came to a grove that he first took for young sorghum. Except it was not the season for young sorghum, but tall sorghum. But these green plants, which grew in orderly rows, were neither."
Remo looked around. The corn had been planted in orderly rows with the stalks well-spaced before they were cut down.
"Now, farmers tended these plants that were sown in rows, and it was harvest time," said Chiun. "Weary from his journey, Kokmul stopped and asked a farmer about his unfamiliar crop.
"The farmer, honoring the Master of Sinanju, snapped off the top of one plant and stripped it of its green leaves, exposing a vile yellow thing like a demon's smile with numerous blunt teeth protecting it."
"An ear of corn," said Remo.
"Yes."
"Never heard it described in such appetizing terms," Remo grunted.
Chiun waved the remark away into the corn.
"The farmer showed Kokmul how to boil the yellow thing in water so that its hard teeth did not break human teeth when bitten, and how to eat it safely, as well as how to prepare it as bread or meal. And Kokmul, being an innocent in the ways of corn, became hooked by the wondrous ways in which corn could be eaten."