"I did not see them. But they were your typical American racists looking down on everyone else. And they said the important thing not to let Indians have was the right to be in charge of important things. And that got my goat. Now will you please put me back on my feet?"
Remo yanked the man's heels upward, slapping his head around on the carpet like a yo-yo, and then righted the man and set him firmly on his feet. "You just can't go around doing that to people," said the editorial writer.
"I do it all the time," said Remo.
"These voices really got you doing, didn't they?" asked Chiun.
"Most assuredly."
The other source Chiun finally tracked down was a regional administrator who claimed to be the first one to call for Indians in those jobs.
And where, asked Chiun, did the administrator get the idea?
"It is mine. I thought of it. I am a man who is being watched in Delhi itself, most assuredly," said the administrator.
"And I am a friend of the prime minister. And he blames whoever thought of this as a walking disaster, an affront to the nation, an embarrassment to India because it makes people believe Indians can't run things. "
"But it's the whites who are responsible. Everyone knows that. The lawyers know that. The people know that. The press knows that."
"As a friend of the prime minister, I blame you."
"Not me."
"Then who?"
"I will not say."
"A son?"
"I have no sons."
Remo started the upside-down treatment again, but Chiun raised a frail-looking hand.
"Please, don't be so uncivilized. Besides, a Master of Sinanju should not put his hands on anyone unworthy of the glorious death we deal."
"Nothing glorious about death. Death is death."
"You're so American," moaned Chiun.
The administrator left the room, asking them to wait, and Remo chafed at being thwarted in his desire to apply physical incentives. But shortly Remo saw that Chiun was right. For the administrator came back, saying he himself wanted to hear from the prime minister. If he were being accused of something, he wanted to defend himself.
"And who have you been speaking to?"
"No one. Only my wife," said the administrator. And that night Remo and Chiun visited the wife in the gardens of her house, among the fragrant blossoms and the fishponds.
At first she begged not to be beaten. Then, seeing she was not going to be harmed, she assumed the American and the Oriental were weak and threatened to call her husband. When this didn't work either, she cast a longing glance at the handsome American with the high cheekbones and mentioned her husband wouldn't be home for hours.
"Most beautiful and tempting maiden," said Chiun to the plump Indian wife, "as tempting as your beauty is, we must pursue a different course at this moment, to regret forever the losing of this rare moment of rapture in your splendid arms. Forgive us, we must be about your prime minister's business."
"The prime minister?"
"He is watching your husband closely for promotion. "
"Then it was the right decision."
"Of course, beautiful maiden," said Chiun. "But we know there are evil forces about that would harm him. It was not the decision that was bad but the person behind it. And we know she is not bad either."
"You know so much, wise one. Yes, it was not me. It was a voice."
"And who was attached to the voice?"
"It is a strange thing. It came from strange places. It came from metal. But there was no one in the metal. "
"I see. And what did it say?"
"It mentioned that my husband was being overlooked in Delhi because whites still held the important jobs in the International Carborundum factory."
"Ah, thank you," said Chiun, and when they left the house with the pastel exterior walls, Chiun said he had expected to find everything they had found that day. One only had to look at the mountains to know they would find all this. And he was disappointed to see Remo did not get that message when he was instructed to look at the mountains.
"I don't understand," said Remo.
"Obviously, when beggars are more important than your beloved teacher, the man who found you as nothing with white habits and made you into a Master of Sinanju, then you would of course not understand. "
"Get off my back. What did I miss?"
"Something as obvious as the mountain. The gas was more deadly because it was kept in a bowl of mountains. The gas was released because the wrong people were put in charge. The wrong people were put in charge because an editor was struck in his ego and a wife was struck precisely and exactly in her ambition for her husband."
"I followed. What the hell does that have to do with the mountains?"
"The person we cannot find, the voice from nowhere, knows how things work."
"Well, that's obvious," said Remo.
"You missed it, as you missed the mountains," said Chiun.
Since the hotel was filled with American journalists and investigating engineers, Remo and Chiun accepted the hospitality of the plant manager, Rashad Palul, who lived in a house with twenty servants just as though he were a British official.
There were guest rooms and servants for Remo and Chiun. Flowers adorned the doorways. Cool water was placed at their disposal. A footman fanned their brows.
"And you," said Chiun, "still like America..."
"All these servants make me nervous."
"Yes. You are only comfortable with machines doing your bidding. You like steel and microchips and engines. But when a warm human being attempts to serve you, you are revolted. I am up against invincible ignorance," said Chiun.
And that night he went to sleep saying nothing more to Remo, hoping that if he kept him in India long enough the boy would learn something of a superior civilization.