"Well, Ferris, we can drink champagne, can't we? Get those out-of-sync settings down on paper and we'll celebrate."
"What about that matter?"
"What matter?"
"The secretary."
"Hell with her," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "Let her sue. We'll settle out of court and still be billions in the black."
"Billions," said Ferris D'Orr under his breath.
"Billions."
Chapter 8
Remo Williams awoke with the rain.
Or rather, the rain woke Remo Williams. He had spent the night in his unfinished future home, sleeping on the hard floor and collecting a few splinters from the unplaned wood. The rain started shortly after dawn, a light sprinkle, and pattered on his sleeping form.
A fat droplet splashed on Remo's high cheek and rilled into his parted mouth. He came to his feet, tasting the cool, sweet drop. It was different from the rain in America, which tasted brackish and full of chemicals. He threw his head back to catch more drops.
Today, Remo decided, he would thatch the roof. Then he remembered that he didn't know how.
Remo reluctantly made his way through the mud to the House of the Masters, which shone like a slick jewel in the rain.
Remo knocked first. There was no answer. "C'mon, Chiun."
He knocked again, and receiving no reply, focused on his breathing. A Westerner, straining to hear better, concentrates on his ears. But that tenses the sensitive eardrums and is counterproductive. By focusing his breathing, Remo relaxed his body and attuned it to his surroundings.
Remo's relaxed but very sensitive ears told him that Chiun was not inside the house.
"Anyone see Chiun?" Remo asked of the two women walking by with burdens of cordwood.
They smiled at him and shook their heads no.
Remo shrugged. He tried the door. It was not locked and he went in.
Everything was as before; heaps of jewels and bowls of pearls were scattered across the floor. On the taboret beside Chiun's low throne there was a piece of parchment. Even across the room, Remo recognized his name, written in English.
Remo snatched up the paper. To Remo the Unfair:
Know that I do not fault you, my son, for the misfortune that has recently befallen me, the Master of Sinanju, who has lifted you up from the muck of a foreign land and raised you to perfection. That you have never thanked me for my sacrifices is of no moment, I do not hold this against you. Nor do I fault you for the manner in which you have stolen the affection of my people. It is their affection to give, and how could they resist the insidious blandishments of one who has been trained by Chiun-whom I know you will refer to in the histories that you will write as Chiun the Great. Not that I am telling you your business. Write the histories as you see fit.
Do not worry about me now that I have gone from Sinanju. I am in the evening of my life, and my work is done. I would stay in the village I have selflessly supported, but no one wants an old man, not even to honor for his great accomplishments. But I did not do the work of my House to be honored, but to continue my line. And now you will take up that burden from my drooping shoulders. May you bear many fine sons, Remo, and may none of them visit upon you the ingratitude and indignities which have been my sorry lot.
The village is yours. The House of the Masters is yours. Mah-Li is yours-although I expect you to honor the traditional engagement period. I do not blame you for casting me aside like an old sandal and lavishing your fickle affections upon Mah-Li-formerly known as Mah-Li the Beast-for she is young like you, and youth never appreciates the company of the stooped and the elderly, for it reminds them of the loneliness and infinnities that lie in store for them. Sometimes deservedly so.
Build your toilets, Remo. As many as you like. Make them big enough to swim in. I grant you my permission. And condoms. Build those too. May the shoreline of Sinanju boast condoms taller than any known in the modern world, as a true testament to the glory of Remo the Unfair, latest Master of Sinanju.
I go now to live in another land-the only land in which I have known contentment and the respect of a fair and generous emperor.
P.S. Do not touch capital. Spend all the gold you wish, but do not sell any treasure. The gold exists for the use of the Master, but the treasure belongs to Sinanju.
P.P.S. And do not place your trust in the villagers. Not even Mah-Li. They are fickle. Like you. And they do not love you, you know, but only covet your gold.
The note was signed with the bisected trapezoid that was the symbol of the House of Sinanju.
"Oh, great," said Remo in the emptiness. He plunged into the next room, where Chiun kept his most personal effects. They were stored in fourteen steamer trunks, all of them open. There were no closets in Sinanju. It was another improvement Remo had hoped to make.
All fourteen steamer trunks were still there. The note, therefore, had to be a bluff. Chiun would never leave without his steamer trunks. Remo checked Chiun's kimono trunk. There were three garments missing, a gray traveling robe, a sleeping robe, and the blue-and-gold kimono favored for wear when Masters met with former emperors.
"He really has gone," Remo said dully.
And it was true. Remo turned out the whole village. Every hut, every hovel, was checked. Chiun was nowhere to be found.
"What does this mean?" asked Mah-Li, after the truth became clear.
"Chiun's gone," Remo said. "He left during the middle of the night."
"But why would he leave? This is his home. He has longed for Sinanju ever since he departed for America."
"I think he felt left out," Remo said at last.
The villagers of Sinanju were distraught. The women wept. The men howled their anguish to the sky. The children, frightened by the sounds, ran and hid. All had the same plaintive cry. All asked the same burning question. All feared the answer.
It was Pullyang, the caretaker, who addressed it to the new Master, Remo.
"Did he take the treasure with him?"
And when Remo barked, "No!" joy filled the village like the lifting of storm clouds.
"Shame, shame on you all," scolded Mah-Li. "The Master Chiun has protected us and fed us for as long as most of us have lived our lives. Shame that you should be so uncaring."
"Thanks, Mah-Li," said Remo, as the villagers slinked away.
"But where would the Master go?" she asked in a quieter voice.
Remo was standing in the mud outside of Chiun's house when the question was asked. The light rain was steadily obliterating any possible trace of footsteps, and the Master of Sinanju, whose step would not wrinkle a silk-sheeted bed, never left a discernible trail anyway.
But, oddly, there were traces visible in the melting mud. A deeper footstep here, a faint thread of gray kimono silk there. Could Chiun be so upset, Remo wandered, that he did not take the usual care in walking?
With the curious villagers trailing behind him, Remo retraced Chiun's path out of the village and up the lone trail through the rocks to the one road leading in and out of the village.
At the crest of the hill, Remo looked down the dirt road, which, at a respectful distance, widened into three black highways, built by the leader of the People's Republic of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, to atone for a transgression against Sinanju made not long ago. One highway ran east; the others veered north and south.
Chiun's sandaled footsteps led as far as the end of the dirt road. Remo saw faint wet imprints of his steps at the beginning of the south highway.