"Indeed," Remo agreed. "What are your three things?"
"The first is my book," Chiun said.
"What book?"
"My history of Ung poetry. It is a short history, barely adequate to hint at the true beauty of Ung poetry. Only two thousand pages, but it is a start."
"I bet it is," Remo said.
"I have also added two hundred of the very best of my own Ung," Chiun said. "Would you care to hear one?" Before Remo could answer, Chiun took a deep breath and began to recite in Korean in a sing-songy squeak even higher than his usual tone. Remo's sparse Korean was enough to allow him to translate.
A snowflake A snowflake falls The cold air embraces it It falls to the ground The ground embraces it A snowflake
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The snowflake
Dirt follows
Dirt falls on the snowflake
The snowflake turns gray
Dirty gray
Then black
The snowflake melts
Oh, snowflake!
Oh, dirt!
Remo knew the poem was ended when Chiun stopped speaking. He turned to the old man, who had lowered his gaze to the floor, as if modestly declining the world's waves of adulation.
Remo clapped his hands and cheered, "Bravo. Marvelous. Now what is the second thing?"
"You liked that poem?" Chiun asked
"Great. Fantastic. The second thing?"
"I will recite another one for you," Chiun said.
"No," said Remo, "please don't."
"Why not, my son?"
"I couldn't stand it."
Chiun looked at him sharply.
Remo added quickly, "Too much "beauty in one day. I couldn't take it. I can only deal with the beauty of one Ung at a time. And they have to be spaced very far
apart."
Chiun nodded at this very reasonable position on Re-mo's part. "The second thing," he said.
"Yes?"
"Your feet are wet," Chiun said. "You look as if you have been slopping around in the water like a penguin. You have not been concentrating. You have been acting like a white man again. You are a disappointment
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to me. You cannot even walk on water without getting your feet wet, and then tracking up our room. You are a grave disappointment."
"Ungrateful too," Remo said. "You always tell me I'm ungrateful."
"That too," said Chiun. "I should make you practice right now, and I would, except for the third thing."
"What is this third thing?" Remo asked, as he knew he was supposed to.
"The Emperor Smith has work for us to do."
"No."
"Urgent work," Chiun said.
"No. I need a vacation. I'm tired. That's why my feet got wet. I can't concentrate anymore."
"I cannot tell your employer that," Chiun said. "If I did, he would not send the gold to Sinanju, and once again my people would have to send their babies home to the sea."
Remo turned back to the window, hoping for a midair collision that would counteract the dullness of the next few minutes of history lesson. He had heard it a thousand times. Sinanju was a dismal, tiny village on the coast of the barren and even more dismal West Korean Bay. It was a poor village with poor soil. Farming was bad* and fishing was even worse. In the long-ago-past, even in the best of times, its people could just barely eke a living out of the surrounding land and waters. In normal times they starved. In bad times, they drowned their babies and children in the cold waters of the bay, which was more merciful than letting them starve to death. The villagers called it sending the children home to the sea, but no one was fooled by the words.
Then sometime before the beginning of recorded his-
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tory, the best fighting men from the village began hiring themselves out as mercenaries and assassins to whichever ruler was willing to pay their price. Because there was always a market for death and because the killers from Sinanju were scrupulous about sending their wages home to their loved ones to buy food, the children of the village were allowed to live.
The tradition of the men of Sinanju was a long one, ¦ but it was eventually replaced by another tradition. One of Sinanju's greatest fighters was Wang, and one night as he was studying the stars, he was visited by a great ring of fire from the skies. The fire had a message for him. It said simply that men did not use their minds and bodies as they should; they wasted their spirit and strength. The ring of fire taught Wang the lessons of control—and though Wang's enlightenment came in a single burst of flame, his mastery of what he had learned took a lifetime.
Through control of his own self, Wang became the ultimate weapon. He became the first Master of the House of Sinanju. It was no longer necessary for the other men of the village to fight and die. The Master of the House took that job on himself. And when it was time for him to pass on, the most worthy member of his family took his place. Chiun was the latest in the line of the House of Sinanju, and for the first time, a man who was not a Korean, a man who did not even have yellow skin, was being trained as his successor.
That man was Remo.
From the beginning, the Masters of Sinanju had hired themselves out as assassins. For uncountable centuries, they had served the rulers of every nation in every corner of the world, no matter how remote. The wages that they earned were returned to^the rocky vil-