"Do you know what it was, this important thing?"
"No. And frankly, Poopi, I'm becoming worried. I turn-dare I say it-sixty pretty soon. My Mae West body is dead, and now this one is getting a little frayed around the edges."
"Oh, don't say that! You look great. And you're still the best hoofer in the business."
"Hoofer?" said Kula.
Remo swallowed the urge to crack that the speaker was half-yak.
Squirrelly Chicane beamed, and mischievous gleams came into her blue eyes. "Why, thank you for saying so, Poopi. But on the cosmic scale, I have only a twinkling of time left in this body. I'm afraid I'll have to wait for my next incarnation and I start the search all over again. Whatever it is."
"It is the Bunji Lama," breathed Kula.
"No, no," said Lobsang, shaking his head stubbornly. "It cannot be. She is white."
Kula frowned. "The age is correct. By her own words, she has seen nearly sixty yak-foaling seasons. The last Bunji Lama has been missing for that span. And her hair is like a flame."
"No, no, it cannot be. The Bunji Lama is fated to lead Tibet to greatness. That person is communing with a creature that might have climbed out of Hell itself."
"No argument there," said Remo.
"I do not see the joss without a face," said Lobsang.
"No doubt it is kept on a sacred altar that we must locate," Kula said firmly.
"Listen closely," said Chiun. "The words of the new Bunji Lama will unveil the truth if only you heed them."
The program continued. The Master of Sinanju pretended to watch as intently as the others, but he was actually observing the actions of his guests. Their faces, in the shifting glow of the television screen, were tight with concentration. The Mongol, Kula, wore the rapt expression of an accepting child. But Lobsang Drom contorted his long face with every sentence that reached his ears. From his saffron robe, he extracted a Buddhist rosary of tiny jade skulls and fingered them nervously.
"How do you come up with all these past lives, Squid?" Poopi Silverfish was saying. "I mean, do they come to you in dreams or something?"
"Past-life regressions. My guru taught me how to invoke the buried memories. But we broke up. Now I do it all myself."
Poopi Silverfish rolled her eyes, and her dark face broke out in a smile that managed to be beatific and goofy at the same time. "You know, sometimes I like to think I was the Queen of Sheba about a million years ago."
"I was a princess in the lost continent of Moo twenty million years ago. My name was Toomazooma."
"How did it turn out?"
"Moo sank and I drowned. To this day my heart pounds uncontrollably whenever I slip into the Jacuzzi.
"I'm that way about showers ever since Psycho."
Kula muttered, "I do not understand much of her words, therefore she is very wise."
"No doubt her guru was a very wise man," suggested Chiun in a bland voice.
No one challenged this statement. Least of all Remo.
As the program wound down, the Most Holy Lobsang Drom Rinpoche remained unconvinced.
"That is not the Bunji Lama," he said bitterly.
"Do you distrust what your lazy eyes have seen, Priest?" Kula demanded. "Or what your ears have heard? It is the incarnation, the tulku, the Light That is Coming, himself."
"Herself," Remo inserted.
"Is her hair not flame?" Kula went on. "Does she not speak of many past lives?"
Lobsang Drom hardened his eyes. "I refuse to accept this."
"But we must go to the Bunji Lama and prove it or disprove it ourselves. The Master of Sinanju would not lie."
Chiun cast a warning glance in Remo's direction, then came to his feet like a pillar of blue smoke.
"There is one who can convince you," he said firmly.
"How?" said Lobsang.
"The old Bunji Lama. We will consult him."
All eyes went to the closed steamer trunk, including Remo's.
Chiun waved toward it, saying, "Remo, you will have the honor of opening the trunk."
"Pass," said Remo, making a face.
They looked at him as if he had spoken a filthy word.
"It is a great honor," Chiun chided.
"All right, all right." Remo walked over to the trunk. It was not locked. The brass clasps opened easily enough. Remo forced the two halves apart and stepped back from what was revealed with sudden haste.
It was not the sight of the thing in the trunk that caused him to step back. It was the smell. The interior of the trunk was lined with salt to retard decomposition and hold the odor of decay inside.
For the trunk contained a mummy. Seated in a lotus position, hands cupped in a lap that was covered by a faded and moth-eaten robe of gold, the Bunji Lama wore lichens and mold where his face should be. His eyes were black pits, and his teeth were exposed between lips that had long ago dried and withered. In his hands lay a bronze object that might have been a very ornate dumbbell.
"Looks like a midget," Remo said.
"The Bunji Lama was not yet fifteen when he dropped that body."
Remo made a face. "Don't you people believe in a proper burial?"
Lobsang Drom said, "When a Tibetan dies, he is given sky burial. The ragyabas take the corpse to a proper place, and after its bones have been picked clean by vultures, they are interred."
"Must save a lot of space down at the of boneyard," Remo said dryly. "Not to mention entertaining the kiddies."