"I'm working," Remo said. "If you won't help, don't harm." Then he asked the couple if they knew where the cars had first stopped working on the island.
"Where did the first reports come from?"
"From all over," said the husband.
"From just west of Marigot. There's a small hill there, and farmers were complaining," said the woman. "It changed all their gasoline to waxy uselessness and burned their skin too."
"We had a Porsche 911, a Mercedes 450SL, a Jaguar XKE, and a Chevette," sobbed the husband.
"A Chevette?" asked Remo, wondering what they would need with a little, inexpensive runabout, with all those expensive cars.
"The Chevette was the only one that stayed out of the repair shop," the man said.
Remo and Chiun walked toward Marigot. It amazed Remo how steep the hills were on the little island. They were not mountains, but their steepness gave that impression. Cows roamed freely over their sides. Off in the distance, someone sang slow day-long songs, that easy, almost sleepy beat meant to go on for at least an afternoon. A chameleon perched on a black rock, black as the rock, winking at Remo and Chiun.
"We could have used the cart," Chiun said. 110
"Do you feel the death, Little Father? Do you smell it? The dread. The death. The lingering, ominous feeling?"
"No," said Chiun.
"Neither do I," said Remo. "And 1 wonder why. Before I became Sinanju, I would enter alleys or dark places and feel that, but now I don't. Maybe I'll feel a presence. I'll feel death but there are no drum rolls of fear. And I don't know why."
"When you were a child, you felt like a child, with much fear, for that is how children protect themselves. By fearing and hiding. And this is proper. So when a person is grown but poorly trained, when he fails to be one with his body and his essence, then a gap in the personhood is created. An unknowing of life and death and of one's ability to use his body waits to be filled. And who fills it but the child who knew fear as its only defense?"
"So I have been trained away from fear?" Remo said.
"You have been trained away from those empty spaces. The fear will always be there. The child is the first and the last of all of us. It is said that at the moment of death, every Master of Sinanju will hear his own childhood say good-bye to him." -
Remo knew enough not to tell Chiun that he thought that was beautiful. For that would have shown he did not understand. For in proper training, things were not beautiful, they were right. They were proper. Beautiful meant exceptional beyond the norm, but in Sinanju the norm itself was exceptional, in full unity with all the powers and presences of the universe. It was not beautiful.
"That is so," said Remo simply, the highest compliment he could pay.
They found the hill outside Marigot. A small white box of a factory stood on top. It was ringed by a cyclone fence with a sign that read: puressence, inc. Under that title was a motto: "A Clean World for our Times."
Ill
There was a guard in the guard booth. The guard was not using his gun because it had been used. His mouth was closed around it, and the back of his head was imbedded in the ceiling of the booth. He had blown out his own brains.
Atop the hill, a voice from a loudspeaker shouted hysterically, "It's them. It's them. It's them. Quick, brothers. Don't let them get you. Don't let them get you."
Suddenly, little popping sounds of rifles came from atop the hill. But no bullets were being fired down at them. There was no hiss, not even a flash of a muzzle. All the rifle fire stayed inside the building.
Remo and Chiun moved quickly up the road, not a run but faster than a run, a smooth, loping movement where the heads did not bob but just went forward at increasing speed up the mountain.
As they approached the white building, white as if bleached by the Caribbean sun, they heard giggling inside.
They opened the door. Sitting at desks and microscopes and computer terminals were twenty men and woman, all slumped forward, all with dark, bloody holes where the backs of their heads had been.
The heads were pumping blood from the last lurches of the still-working hearts.
"They're coming, they're coming," came the voice from the loudspeaker. And then here there was laughter. It was not a wild laugh. It was a giggle.
Behind a large crate, a blond bearded man sat giggling. He was missing three teeth, and his grin appeared silly. He nestled the microphone on his kneecaps. He wore a leather shirt and designer jeans and a ruby ring in his left ear-lobe. He seemed absolutely delighted that Remo and Chiun were now standing over him.
"Heyyyy," he said with a happy breath of voice. "Hey. Welcome to Puressence. You're them. We just got the message you might be coming, and we're doing Plan 178-Y. That's heavy."
112
"What's 178-Y?" asked Remo.
"I shout into the speaker that you're coming. That's my first program to follow. I did that really good. You wanna hear?"
And, still giggling, the man yelled into the microphone, "They're coming, they're coming." His voice reverberated over the loudspeakers in the building.
"What's that for?" asked Remo.
"Heyyyy. Goodness and peace, baby."
"I think that was the signal for your people to kill themselves."
"What are you talking about? Nobody is going to kill himself because I yell into a microphone."
Remo took a handful of the scraggly blond hair and lifted the man from the box and turned the grinning face toward the factory of dead people.
"Well?" said Remo.
"Coooool," said the man.
"Cool?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"They did what they wanted. They did their thing."
"You triggered it. That is obviously some kind of panic response."
"That's their problem, man. Not mine. No such things as fair or unfair."
"What if I break your neck?" asked Remo.
"Cooooool," said the man, and grinned the tooth-missing grin.
"I take it you're on drugs," said Remo, dropping the man to the floor. He hit his head and grinned back up. A little flutter came from the upraised feet as he popped a blue tablet into his mouth.