"Chiun knows about these things. You've got to listen to him," said Smith.
"And I know about Chiun. You've got to listen to me. The Master of Sinanju knows what he chooses to know. And what he chooses not to know is sometimes more effective."
"I don't understand that," said Smith.
"Remo just pledged his loyalty thrice over," said Chiun, and now he was angered with his pupil. One did not tell emperors too much about one's real business.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Blissful Master, Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, chosen by the force of the universe, born of that which had been born before and would be born again, heard the warnings from his priests and arch-priests. He listened from the golden pillow throne to this worry and that worry. Heard his women and his men tell of tales of this follower lost and that one killed. Heard, he did, of warnings from the east. Heard supplications that he delay, if only for a year, the big plan of which he sometimes spoke and which all knew would soon come to pass.
Women with heads shaved, and women with but the forelock left, and women with their hair full around their shoulders pressed their foreheads to the mosaic floors. Sweet incense rose from silver and ruby bowls. New flowers graced the mosaic ceiling.
And the Blissful Master spoke.
"Frankly, I don't need this shit. If you want to know where I'm at, that's where I'm at." His voice was squeaky fifteen, his round face glistened with sweat, his small mustache struggled hopelessly over a young brown lip.
"O Chosen One, O Perfect One, would that you would not turn your perfect face from us. Would that you would consider our supplication," said a man with wizened brown face, an Ilhibad hill tribesman who had come down from the hills with his brothers to serve the father of the Blissful Master and who now served the son, for did not the son have the spirit of the father, and was not the spirit perfect, the way it would lead, the perfection it enjoyed, proof of the force itself that kept the community of faithful alive and fruitful and growing. And especially growing.
"Consider again," said the man.
"Consider. Consider. Consider," chanted the throng.
"All right, what's your name, let's hear it again," said Maharaji Dor to the brown man who was an arch-priest. The old buzzard had been around since Dor could remember, and he was tired of the dippy advice. "Go ahead, what's your name."
"Is it not written that there are three proofs of our truth?"
"Hey, sweetie, I run this lashup. You don't have to go back to basics with me. I'm the Blissful Master."
"First," said the arch-priest, his brown hands arching above his head, "is the proof of reality, of that which is. We are. That is proof number one."
"That's also a proof for Disneyland and the Taj Mahal," mumbled Dor to no one in particular. His eyes settled on the pale neck of the girl who had gotten that black Baptist, Powell, out here with her letter. Why was that man's name plaguing him? Of all the ministers he had seen here, of all the people he had met, that name stuck. He looked at the neck and remembered the Reverend Mr. Powell and, looking at the lines of the young thigh stretched against the pink sari, he thought it might be nice to bed again with what's her name.
"Proof two is that for generations we have always had a Blissful Master."
"Which would prove the Catholic Church more than it would us," mumbled the maharaji.
"And third, and final, absolute proof, we have grown, always grown. From a handful of the enlightened in your great grandfather's day, to more in your grandfather's day, to a large community in your father's day, and now to the worldwide enlightenment in your day. These are the proofs."
"Hail, Blissful Master. Hail him who brings peace and happiness, hail the truth in man's form," chanted the throng.
"All right, all right," said the maharaji.
"Thus we ask, lest wrong ideas about our growth cloud your truth, let us postpone your great plan for but a year until we are more secure from the negative forces," said the arch-priest.
"If we wait until all the negative forces are gone, we'll be sucking our thumbs here in Patna for another generation."
"But a follower has been killed in a disturbing way, a follower who carried arms."
"What was he doing with a gun? I assume it was a gun?"
"He was a sheriff. A man of one of the many governments in America. An enlightened one who had seen the true way."
"I'm sorry to hear that. We are deeply grieved that one of our true ones has suffered an ill fate physically. However, he has had in his life more happiness than those who have not been enlightened. Let us be thankful for his brief happiness. Next case."
"The manner in which he was killed causes alarm," persisted the arch-priest.
"You get alarmed at a change in the weather."
"His neck was shattered."
"He fell."
"In an American desert from which there was no great height."
"He tripped then," said the maharaji.
"The neck was shattered, not broken. Shattered by…"
"Enough," said the maharaji. "I'll see you alone." He clapped his hands and rose from his golden pillows. He left to the sounds of the heavy chanting with his arch-priest close behind him.
When they reached his game room, he noticed there was a new-electronic device for him, called interplanetary. It was lit, and the little blips of light were dancing around the screen.
"All right. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, not in front of the faithful. What are you telling them horror stories for?"
"But, O Perfect…"
"Shut up. Are we or are we not in the happiness business, yes or no?"
"But…"
"Yes or no?"
"Yes, we give the fulfillment of the happiness human beings were meant to have."
"So if we're happiness, why are you laying all these horror stories on the troops?"
"But we face danger."
The maharaji flipped a switch full throttle and sent a blip directly across the screen through weaving obstacles. A board above the screen lit up, signifying a win.
"If you go fast, you get through safely. If you go slowly…" The maharaji eased back on the throttle, and the blip immediately collided and was sent back to the right of the screen. The board above lit up a "crash."
"I have heard tales of men who can shatter a neck with their hands," said the arch-priest.
"Maybe they had a machine," said the maharaji.