"You will find another sign," Chiun said.
"How do you know?" asked Terri.
"Someone tried this every so often," Chiun said. "You would think they would learn." But he would explain no more.
The paving leading to the pool was inlaid with ivory upon polished marble. Pictures of the goddess Gint consorting with the god of thunder were everywhere.
A pack of the faithful stood before one of the priests. They wore rags and he wore just a loincloth and lay on his back upon a bed of sharpened spikes.
It was this proof of body control that let him
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speak to the multitudes. He had not only been trained as a priest of Gint but had been to the London School of Economics, where he learned to hate America.
He also hated Britain, France, West Germany and all the Western industrialized countries. This was easy to come by in London where he had been exposed to what he and most of the other Third World students really hated about the West. They weren't part of it.
Seeing Remo and Terri, he spoke in English to the multitudes.
"Here they are. The imperialists. Why don't you have skyscrapers like they have? Because they have exploited them from you. Why don't you have as many shirts as they have? Because they have many shirts while you do not even have one. Is that fair? They consume so much of the resources of the world that you have nothing. They ride around in big cars while you walk on bare feet. Is that fair? There they are. The imperialists come to step on you."
Thus spoke the fakir dedicated to the goddess Gint. Now the beggars who stood around did not understand English but the fakir knew the talk was not for them, for they had no coins for his begging bowl. It was for the Americans themselves, because if you called Americans or Britons imperialist exploiters, they would put bills in your bowl. Especially American women who were stupid enough to believe that if Americans had fewer shirts, somehow Indians would have more.
The Britons were not as good for this, sometimes thinking things through. But American women
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were absolutely splendid, believing that somehow American use of bauxite and petroleum deprived people in loincloths of something they would otherwise use.
The fakir saw the American man approach. He could see that his speech had gotten to the woman but the American's man's face was hard to read.
"Exploiter of the masses, have you come to step on us? Have you" come to steal our bauxite? Are you robbing us of our manganese and ferrous oxide?"
The fakir lifted his head very gently for a sudden move on his bed or nails would let the sharpened spikes pierce his backbone.
"Pig. Brutalizer. Robber," he said to Remo and Terri. Terri put fifteen dollars American into the bowl. Remo stepped up and onto the fakir, pressing him down into his nails, making sure the upper back went down with the first step so there would be no more noise out of the mouth.
The fakir lay there embedded on his spikes. Remo took back Terri's fifteen dollars and gave it to the crowd.
Terri looked at the fakir, the crowd, the fakir, Remo, and the fakir again. Already flies were settling on him.
"Why . . . what did you do that for?" she gasped.
"Listen, if he says I came to step on him, who am I to prove him wrong?"
"You're the ugly American. Absolutely," she said.
"Why not?" said Remo and the day was good.
Terri turned to Chiun. "Did you see him? He just killed a man. For no reason at all. A poor simply holy man speaking the truth as he knew it,"
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Chiun said nothing but Remo snapped, "I don't know what the matter is with you, but you seem to take some malignant anti-American crap and invest it with virtue. You don't know what he was talking about. Maybe he was ragging the crowd to mob us. Would you rather have seen me kill the crowd?"
"All this death all the time. Why, why, why?" asked Terri.
"Because, because, because," said Remo.
"That's not an answer."
"It is for me," Remo said.
"You beast," said Terri.
And in Korean, Chiun said to Remo about the fakir now impaled on his bed of nails, "I always wanted to do that. I always wanted to do that."
Terri did not understand what he said, but she said, "That's right, Chiun. You tell him that professional assassins don't kill wantonly."
"It seemed right," Remo said to Chiun in Korean.
"Don't listen to him," Terri said to Chiun. "He could corrupt you."
"If you see another one," Chiun said in Korean, "He's mine. I don't know why we never thought of that before."
"You've got to be special," said Remo with pride.
"I am," said Chiun. "That's why I don't know why I never thought of that before."
Suddenly Terri sobbed. "I hate you," she sputtered at Remo. "I hope the mob does mob us. How's that?"
"No. They only go after you if you look weak. They'll never attack anyone who steps a fakir into his nails," Remo said.
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Terri looked. It was true. All the beggars were looking at the punctured corpse as a curiosity. No one was bothering them. One of them peeled off the corpse's loincloth to use as his own.
According to legend, the goddess Gint mated with the forces of the universe to create the god of dark places.
Gint herself was said to have murdered a part of the day which people would never see again. It was not morning or evening, but was supposed to occur shortly after noon and according to legend, was a cool and dark moment, a brief respite from the hot Indian sun.
This did Gint take into her bosom and away from mankind. Naturally, it made her one of the India's most beloved goddesses. She was widely regarded as the benefactress of schemes, and the cult of Gint was one of the richest in India.
Yet this day as Remo and Chiun accompanied Terri into the temple looking for more Hamidian writing, no one was tending the flowers or the candles or the sweetmeats set at the feet of the goddess' statue.
Gint had seven breasts and according to Indian mythology eight sons, who promptly destroyed the weakest by cutting off his lips so he could not eat.