There was a strange silence in the city as the caravans made their way down into the bowl valley that housed the city of Gupta.
In one sector was a modern array of tanks and pipes that made up International Carborundum . They appeared still to be working. Remo felt Chiun touch his arm.
"Look," said Chiun. "Look."
"At what?"
"At everything. Has insolence also blinded your eyes? What do you see?"
"I see a city. I see mountains. I think the factory is still working. I don't know if it's still dangerous or what. "
"You see and you don't see," said Chiun. "It was gas that killed. Look around you."
"These mountains make a bowl," said Remo.
"Now we are supposed to look for people who cause accidents, who make profit from them. If this is so, then they chose their site well. Whoever did this knows how to use the land. The gas would sit in the bowl a long time and not be blown away."
In the city, life was returning. The places of those who had died were taken by people from other cities who had no places. It occurred to Remo, seeing this, that the population explosion people criticized was really nature's way of keeping the race alive. Though thousands had died horribly, in time it would not even be remembered.
A young boy with large dark eyes and a big smile ran after Remo and Chiun's litter, begging and not getting anything, his smile turning into a frown and his happy chatter to curses. Remo laughed and gave the boy some change. Immediately scores of children poured from doorways and ran after the litter.
In their joy and laughter and in their numbers Remo felt that in India life was stronger than death. Chiun had never said this. He said there was an eternal balance between what the Masters called light and darkness, life and death, something and nothing.
Chiun also insisted on making proper sacrifices at five different temples to five different gods. At the temple of Shiva he suggested Remo make a personal sacrifice of a goat or a dove.
Remo, who had been raised in a Catholic orphanage in Newark, looked at the many-armed model of the god surrounded by symbolic flame, the "destroyer of worlds" as he was called, and just shook his head. He couldn't do it.
"He is special to you, Remo. All the prophecies about a dead man returning to become a Master of Sinanju involve Shiva, Remo," said Chiun.
"Yeah," said Remo. "I know." But he didn't go into the temple and he didn't make a sacrifice. He did not say a Hail Mary either. He just turned away and went back to the litter.
At the factory Remo was told he could not enter, but must wait in line.
"You cannot get work by pushing ahead and showing rudeness," said the official at the gate.
Remo looked back over the line.
"You mean all these people are waiting for work here?"
"Of course, these are good jobs.".
"But I thought these were dangerous jobs. Deadly jobs."
"Don't you dare say that. We will never consider you. "
From the litter Chiun berated the man for not showing more respect, and freely used the name of the prime minister. The gates opened and the guardian gave a small bow.
"This is civilization," said Chiun. "Where in America do you get proper courtesy?"
"You mean keeping hundreds waiting while we are shown deferential treatment?"
"Of course. You are against deferential treatment?"
"Yeah. Kind of. I kind of feel sorry for these people. I hate to see them ignored like that, just for us."
"Just for us?" asked Chiun with anger. "There is never just us. There is, most of all, most importantly, us. But I should not be surprised that you think of 'us' as a just, as nothing, something to be ignored and reviled. You are the one who does not care for money."
"Right. We don't need it. What do we need it for? You have all the robes you can ever wear. We get everything we ask for paid for by the organization, and that isn't much. It's a roof over our heads at most. So what else do we need?"
"Remo, do not make me sick," said Chiun.
At the Gupta plant of International Carborundum , Chiun freely bandied about the name of the prime minister and was accorded special respect. Seeing that he was shameless in his demands, the Indian employees, who respected shamelessness, gave him just about everything he wanted. While the American investigating engineers were delayed, dallied with, lied to, and fawned over to mislead them, Chiun and Remo got the real scoop.
"It was some stupid little valve that went. How should I know?" said the president of the local plant, Rashad Palul. He wore a lightweight English suit with an English school tie. He smoked English cigarettes and lit them with an English lighter. His English diction and grammar were impeccable. Remo felt like he was talking to some British lord.
"What do the American engineers say?"
"Something or other," said Rashad Palul. "They're dreadfully boring."
"I heard people weren't doing the proper maintenance."
"Rubbish. I increased the maintenance budget fifty-fold. You can't blame maintenance. I put the very best in charge of safety and increased the budget. Have you heard of the lawsuit?"
"I know some American lawyers are over here."
"By Jove, they certainly are. The sums they are demanding! Might put International Carborundum in a sticky position, what? Don't you think? Not that the Americans will get what they're after. They won't earn much here, the blighters. "
"Why not?"
"Do you know the average worth of an Indian citizen? I'm not talking about us, you know, of course. I am talking about the commoners."
"No, I don't," said Remo, thinking about the smiling boy who had cadged money from him. It was only a grand accident, Remo had thought, that he had been born in America and that boy born here. Because if the opposite were true, Remo did not see how even he would be any different from the millions of Indians. There was just no way out for the common people here. That was the glory of America. That was what America meant to him. It was hope. That was what was lacking in a country like this. Who you were born was who you would be for the rest of your life.
"I would say on an average for a breadwinner, the award at most would be three hundred dollars. And that is high. That is a maximum price on his life."
"And for a boy?" asked Remo.
"No one's son? No one important?"
"A beggar," said Remo.
"Ten dollars. A dollar. A copper bowl. Whatever. They are of little importance. There are so many of them."
"There have to be with the way you dips run a country. India isn't run. It's excreted," said Remo.
"I beg your pardon," said Rashad Palul.