The Generalissimo was not exactly sure how it worked, but somehow the Western World, especially America, was to blame for the incredible promiscuity of the San Gauta maiden and the magnificent sex drive of every San Gauta male. Ordinarily bad sanitation disease, and the starvation that had afflicted this area for aeons kept an almost mathematical balance of people.
But because of all the warnings that time was running out, Western agencies began shipping food, cleaning up sewers, and teaching new methods of living longer. They sent down doctors and nurses. There was medicine. The shame of so few babies living to maturity had been conquered. Which led to more grown-ups. Which led to more grown-ups making more babies. The whole place was like a giant guppy tank run amok. And now time was truly running out on San Gauta for Generalissimo Eckman-Ramirez. With all the people crowded together, pollution was getting worse. Starvation was getting worse and then came the worst assault of all. It was a combination of liberal Protestants, Jewish intellectuals, and an order of nuns. Between them they came up with a massive social program to eradicate all evils.
They presented it in such a way that anyone who allowed the current state to persist appeared to be some form of devil. Therefore, anyone fighting that person was on the side of good. Willing to fight the Generalissimo were the usual hill bandits who had specialized for generations, even before the arrival of the Spaniards, in pillage, rape, and the murder of innocents: women, children, unarmed farmers in the field.
But now they put a little star on a red flag, called the pillage and rape "guerrilla warfare," and announced their goal as liberation. What they wanted to liberate was what they had always wanted to liberate: everything the townsfolk couldn't protect.
They were immediately armed by the Cubans, which left the Generalissimo reaching out for the Americans to help him counter their new and better weapons. Whereas before, a village or two might suffer an attack by the hill bandits once a year, now the attacks came weekly. Whereas before, the national army might respond once or twice a year by shooting some cannon into the hillsides, now there were daily fusillades.
The death count became enormous, especially as the nuns returned with stories of atrocities to America, where they called upon their countrymen to donate money to fight barbarism. This was not altogether a lie. The Generalissimo was indeed barbaric. But so were the liberating forces whom the nuns in their innocence now declared as saviors. The one thing the nuns never seemed to entertain was the possibility that they themselves were indeed innocents and didn't know what was going on. But they were always good for a story of suffering.
There seemed to be no end to the blood running daily through the streets of Chitibango, because not quite enough people were killed to balance out the new advances in medicine and agriculture. This was a problem typical of a Central American country.
And thus did San Gauta receive journalists who detailed the atrocities of the Generalissimo. And thus did Kathy O'Donnell, like anyone else who followed the news, hear of Eckman-Ramirez the butcher, the man whose estates were guarded by fire and steel and barbarous henchmen.
It was this time that came first to Kathy's mind when this magnificent specimen with the thick wrists entered her life. She wanted to see the butcher of Chitibango pulped.
She could have chosen someone else. This wonderful man she was with could destroy anyone. But she wanted someone far away from Boston and the fluorocarbon generator. She wanted someone who would be a challenge for her brutal stranger. The Russians apparently weren't. And so, in that one instant, she fondly chose the butcher of South America. She thought of the nice fight his notorious guards would put up. If this man called Remo lost, she could always buy her way out, but if he won, well, she would be there for the magnificent thrill of it.
Even more important, now she didn't care what happened. She just wanted more of Remo.
"Yes. I am sure of it. This does look like the right jungle. He had a magnificent hacienda."
"All these dictators down here have one," said Remo. "He had a high peaked hat."
"That's standard, too."
"He had a nose that didn't look like a balloon," said Kathy. "And hair that didn't look like it was manufactured in a Bayonne plastics factory."
"Might be Eckman-Ramirez," said Remo. He had seen his picture once in a magazine.
"He said he would pay well for my conducting the test. I didn't know there would be all that suffering. Those poor animals."
"Did you see the weapon?"
"He said he had it. He had it hidden. I should have known."
"Why?" said Remo. He noticed she was having difficulty moving along the path. The natives had looked at his wrists and trusted him immediately. Why, he wasn't sure. But he was sure that they were looking at his wrists when they told him not only where the Generalissimo lived, but that he was there now.
"All the news articles. I didn't believe them. I didn't believe they were telling the truth, and now you tell me this device can do harm to people."
"You didn't see the animals there?" said Remo.
"I saw them. I saw them suffer. Yes," said Kathy. She allowed her blouse to open, revealing a rising bosom glistening with San Gauta warmth. Ordinarily Kathy could allow her blouse to open with such artistry that she could play with almost any man's eyes, getting him to lean over a table, keep his head cocked at an awkward angle, and usually not think about what he was supposed to be thinking about. It was a lovely business tool. A properly opened blouse was as useful to her as a desktop computer.
But this man didn't seem to dwell on her body. He seemed to be involved with everything around them, knowing where the path went when of course he couldn't have known. He told her he felt it.
"Your blouse is open," said Remo.
Kathy let her chest rise and looked at him coyly.
"Is it really?" she said, letting him get the full magnificence of what was pressing up out of her bra.
"Yeah. Now, why didn't you believe you would be doing any harm?"
"I trust too much," she said. She felt the whole jungle slither with things she couldn't see. Things with hairy legs and little teeth that some television show had probably photographed laying eggs or eating some other thing with legs just as hairy and almost as many teeth.
The magazine article did not show the smells, or the fact that your feet sank into the jungle floor, into dark leafy substances that she was sure must have contained millions of those hairy-legged things.
"Are you married?" she said.
"I think I told you no. Don't walk so heavy," said Remo.
"I walk beautifully," said Kathy. Suddenly she didn't mind the jungle. She minded the insult.
"No you don't. Clunk clunk. Try not to crush the ground. Treat it like your friend. Walk with the ground. It'll be easier on you and the ground and we won't be announcing ourselves to whatever it is behind that hillock up ahead."
Kathy couldn't see anything beyond the dense green foliage. She couldn't even see the hillock.
"How do you know there's something there?"
"I know. C'mon. Walk with the ground, not on it." Exasperated, Kathy tried walking with the ground to prove to herself it didn't work. But she found that by watching Remo walking and trying to think as he had instructed, she was not so much pressing forward, as gliding forward. She shut her eyes. And stumbled. She had to watch him to do it.
"Where did you learn this?"
"I learned it," said Remo.
"It's wonderful," she said.
"It's all right. What is Eckman-Ramirez like?"
"He is a sociopath. They are the best liars in the world. After all, he convinced me. I should have believed the magazine articles. I thought they were propaganda."
"No. They just don't know what they're doing. No one knows what he is doing. Nobody. These yo-yos are going to fry the earth with that thing."
"Some people know," said Kathy. "Whoever taught you to walk like this knows. He must know something. Or was it a she?"
"A he."
"Your father?"
"Shhh."
"Who?"
"Someone, that's all," said Remo. He thought of Chiun going off for some old dusty pieces of gold and wood, the collection of centuries of tribute. Some of the stuff was almost worthless now, as modern man had learned to manufacture some of those materials once considered valuable. But even so. What was a ruby worth if there was no one left on earth to say it was valuable? And still Chiun had gone.