Remo wandered past a stuffed bear, an imitation jungle, two dried musk oxen, and a stuffed yak eating a plastic peony into a dark room with large stones. All were intricately carved. Massive heads with flattened noses and almond eyes. Curving serpents weaving among stilted birds. Rock remnants of peoples who had disappeared in the western onslaught. But as Chiun had said, "The sword does not destroy a people; only a better life does. Swords kill. They do not change."
But on South American cultures Chiun had never shed any light, and Remo was sure it was because those cultures had been cut off from the rest of the world until the coming of the Euro-peans in 1500. Which meant to Chiun, since an ancestor had probably never done business there, that the area was still undiscovered.
"You mean you didn't have book on any of them," Remo had said.
"I mean the area is undiscovered," said Chiun. "A wilderness with strange people, like your country, until I came. Although your birthplace is easier because of so many descendants of Europeans and Africans. But now that I have discovered it, future generations of Sinanju will know of your inscrutable nation."
"And what about South America?" Remo had asked.
"So far undiscovered," Chiun had said. "If you should find out anything, let me know."
Now Remo was in the museum, finding out, and finding out very little at that. The carvings seemed very Egyptian, yet Egyptians used softer stone. These stones were hard.
Two guards stood before a large unmarked door at the north end of the display room.
"I'm looking for a special stone," Remo said. "It's been marked over recently."
"You can't go in," said one guard.
"So it's in there?"
"I ain't saying that. Anyone who goes in needs special permission from the Antiquities Department."
"And where's the Antiquities Department?"
"That's closed today. Just the assistant is on."
"Where's the department?"
"Don't bother, mister. They won't let you in. They never let anybody in who just walks up anymore. Just special people. Don't bother."
"I want to bother," Remo said.
The assistant was in a small box of an office with a desk that made moving around difficult. She looked up from a document, focusing above blue-framed eyeglasses. Her reddish hair formed a bouquet around her delicate face.
"He's not in and I'm busy," she said.
"I want to see that stone in the locked room."
"That's what I said. He's not in and I'm busy."
"I don't know who you're talking about," Remo said, "but I just want to see that stone."
"Everybody who sees it goes through the director, James Willingham. And he's not in as I said."
"I'm not going through James Willingham, I'm going through you."
"He'll be back tomorrow."
"I want to see it today."
"It's really nothing much. It hasn't even been classified into a culture yet."
Remo leaned across the desk and, holding her eyes with his, smiled ever so slightly. She blushed.
"C'mon," he whispered in a voice that stroked her.
"All right," she said, "but only because you're sexy. Academically this makes no sense."
Her name was Valerie Garner. She had an M.A. from Ohio State and was working toward her Ph.D at Columbia. She had everything in her life but a real man. She explained this on the way down to the South American exhibit area. There were no real men left in New York City, she said.
"All I want," she said plaintively, "is someone who is strong but gentle, sensitive to my needs, who will be there when I want and not be there when I don't want. Do you see? Is that asking too much?" asked Valerie.
"Yes," said Remo, beginning to suspect that Valerie Garner, assuming she ever met a man, would not be able to see him because the sound waves rising incessantly from her mouth would obscure her vision.
Valerie motioned the guards away from the door and unlocked it with a key from around her neck.
"The director goes bananas about this stone and there's no reason for it. It's nothing. Nothing."
The nothing she described was about Remo's height. It rested on a polished pink marble pedestal with soft crystal lights bathing it in a deep artificial glow like a far-off morning. A small flowing fountain, carved from what appeared to be a solid five-foot piece of jade, bubbled gently, its clear water coming from carved lips above a perfectly round basin.
The stone itself looked like a random block of igneous rock with incredibly inept scratching of circles and lines, and only by the greatest tolerance could Remo make out a circle, birds, snakes, and what might have been a human head with feathers above it. But the rock had what Remo wanted.
A graceful, glowing green signature of "Joey 172" ran diagonally across the circle from the chunky snake to the stiff bird.
"The graffiti is the only piece of art in it," said Valerie.
"I think so, too," said Remo, who had seen enough. The stone looked like the symbol in the note the police had recovered from under Mrs. Delpheen's body, the symbol that was called an Uctut in the other eleven languages of the note.
"You should have seen Willingham when he saw the graffiti on it," Valerie was babbling. "He couldn't talk for an hour. Then he went into his office and stayed on the phone for a half-day. A full half-day. Long distance calls, overseas and everything. More than a thousand dollars in phone calls that one afternoon."
"How do you know?" asked Remo.
"I handle the budget. I thought we were going to get killed by the trustees but they approved it. Even approved two guards for the doors. And look at the stone. It's nothing."
"Why do you say that?" Remo asked.
"For one thing, I don't think it's more than a thousand years old, which would therefore not justify such shoddy craftsmanship. For a second, look at the Aztec and Inca work outside. Now those are gorgeous. This looks like a scribble compared to them. But you want to know something crazy?"
"Of course," said Remo, sidestepping Valerie's hand, which somehow alighted on his fly as she said the word "crazy."
"This stone has had more groups of visitors from all over the world than any other special exhibit. There's no reason for it."
"I think there is," Remo said. "Why didn't you people clean off the graffiti?"
"I tried to suggest that but Willingham wouldn't hear of it."