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  "India?" said Chiun. "Ah, the Moguls. The grandeur of the rajahs. India has always been a second home to the House of Sinanju."

  "Be careful, Remo," said Smith. "We don't know how these guys work. They even have programs that seem to foil our computers. They can conduct conversations we can't break into. And they seem to be able to cause accidents at will. They can make anything not work."

  "So can I," said Remo.

  "On purpose," said Smith.

  He wondered why there was a sudden change of activity. He was good at wondering. But when he wondered, it was different from others, and it always had been. He wondered what he would find when he saw something that was not working properly.

  It did not have to be a big thing. It just was very clear to him, clearer than sunshine. He could not remember when things like clocks and faucets were not obvious in their workings.

  And so when he tinkered with the program systems of Palmer, Rizzuto the thing that stuck him this day was that an element of surveillance had changed.

  First, there was the increased activity in the database of Palmer, Rizzuto That meant at one time someone was doing something to the Palmer, Rizzuto information that he, or she, shouldn't have been doing. This had led to a simple refraction program based on binary algorithms that spit out the names of the perpetrators as easily as if it were a list of clients.

  There were four so far, including a secretary and a young lawyer.

  But what was apparent most of all in these strange intrusions into the sanctity of Palmer, Rizzuto was the hint of a larger system.

  It was as obvious as a leaky faucet. Someone meant Palmer, Rizzuto no good and was watching them. And when this system, so organized and relentless, suddenly downgraded its attempt to rifle information from the law firm's computers, this man who knew how things worked understood there was a different, more subtle attack coming against the people who had made him so wealthy.

  He phoned Palmer at his home even though it was Palmer's wedding night.

  Palmer's wife answered, screaming.

  "You can speak to that bastard anytime. I'm leaving," she said.

  "Hello, Nathan," he said. "It's me."

  "I can't afford any more help. We haven't made anything on Gupta yet."

  "I've called with a warning."

  "How much?"

  "No charge this time. I was just tinkering. You know how I love to tinker."

  "What's the warning?"

  "You're going to come under attack from a new direction. "

  "Well, that's a relief. I wasn't trusting anyone there for a while."

  "I am afraid this one is going to be more dangerous than the others. You see, from what I can tell just by understanding the programs they used to get at your confidential information, this is not the kind of organization to pull back. If it appears to be pulling back, it's only bringing in something far more dangerous."

  "We don't have money yet. Can you handle it?"

  "Of course. I understand how everything works."

  Chapter 5

  As Remo and Chiun descended the ramp from the jet, Chiun breathed deeply and sighed.

  "Our second home. Sinanju has done some of its finest work here. The great pearl of Hortab was earned here, by the Master Chee, in a very delicate and beautiful assassination. It seems-"

  Remo inhaled and spit.

  The airport, like most of India, smelled of animal and human waste. The massive country made for beautiful pictures and awful odors. Like most of civilization for most of history it had yet to solve its sewage problems. Raw human waste ran in the streets. Garbage was rarely collected in the lower-class neighborhoods, and in the rich neighborhoods it was the prime pickings of gangs. The life of a sacred cow was more important than the life of most citizens and the great holy river of the Ganges, had it run through any Western country, would have been called a pollution danger of immense proportions. Instead the Indians defecated in it, urinated in it, threw their garbage in it, and then bathed in it.

  "Son," said Chiun. "I will show you India as you have never seen it. It will be your second home also."

  "I'd prefer an armpit," said Remo.

  "It is because you do not know how to travel. Before we do anything we must pay our respects to the reigning emperor, and we must go properly," said Chiun.

  "They have a president too," said Remo. "You'll find it the same system as America, which you don't understand. "

  "Really? If it is the same system as America, then why does the son succeed the mother? That is how you tell a throne. Not by whether people think they vote or not. Dynasties are matters of succession."

  "Yeah. He's not going to meet you. India doesn't have kings or emperors or rajahs anymore. That's backward. They're not that backward anymore. They're going to laugh at us."

  Chiun ignored the remarks and hired bearers for a litter roofed with a saffron parasol. He hired trumpeters and callers to announce his coming. And then, with his fourteen steamer trunks ornamented in gold and red ribbons, he set about the return of a Master of Sinanju to the palaces of India. When his bearers brought him to the gates of the presidential palace in Delhi, the horns were told to sound arrival and a bard was instructed to sing, in Hindi, praises to Sinanju, the House of Sinanju, the Masters of Sinanju, and all that was Sinanju.

  "They're going to laugh us out of here, little father," said Remo. "That is, if they don't start shooting." The former prime minister had just been shot by her own Sikh bodyguards and now her son was prime minister, and he was supposed to be surrounded by heavily armed Hindus, some of them his relatives. These soldiers were less professional than the Sikhs that had turned on his mother, and there were rumors that passersby had been shot by excitable guards just for making too much noise. But in Delhi, with so many dead normally on the streets, no one could really tell the difference. As a commentator had once said, a human life in India had all the worth of a toilet-paper wrapper in America. Remo waited in the litter, chuckling. Chiun waited beside him, the soft warm breezes blowing his wisps of white hair like pennants.

  Finally the gates opened and Remo's jaw dropped. The prime minister was standing there, his hands clasped in front of him in formal Hindu greeting. "We have heard of your arrival, O Master of Sinanju. Let India be home to Sinanju and all its glory," said the prime minister.

  Remo couldn't believe his ears. He knew this man was an engineer and had graduated from a modern British university. Yet here he was paying homage to a house of assassins. Remo had learned the stories of the Masters, but he had never quite believed the historical part where this Master or that had saved this pharaoh or that king. Or that they were publicly glorified.

  He believed in Sinanju, the doing of it, but not the trappings. And here were the trappings come to life.

  Chiun sat pleased as punch. He did not bother to say he told Remo so. That would come later. Instead he answered the prime minister.

  "We are glad to be home among our friends," he said. "It has become known to us that your mother has met with a tragedy. While we share your grief, we cannot help but think that your mother might still be with us if you had employed Sinanju instead of Sikh guards."

  "Master of Sinanju," said the Prime Minister of India. "We always have a place for you in our service." Chiun raised a hand. His gray traveling robe fluttered in the breeze.

  "Would you repeat that for my son?" asked Chiun.

  "Consider yourself hired," said the prime minister. "Everyone of importance in India appreciates the virtues of Sinanju. You are, of course, a legend."

  "Would you, Remo, explain what we are doing in America?" said Chiun. "Listen to the nonsense to which Sinanju has been reduced, O leader of the great Indian peoples."

  "No I wouldn't," said Remo. "We don't work for anyone. We're visitors."

  "Then you are welcome and your employ is welcome also."

  "We're busy. Thank you. Some other time," said Remo, and then whispered to Chiun. "We're not supposed to let anyone know who we wo
rk for. You know that. Why'd you tell him to ask me?"

  "Because I am too ashamed to say it myself. Look, this is how Sinanju should be treated. See? Can you imagine an American president coming to the gates of the White House and welcoming us? No. Instead we sneak around like thieves in the night, always afraid someone will hear us. This," said Chiun, pointing to the prime minister, "is where we belong."

  "It stinks," said Remo.

  "It's home," said Chiun.

  "Stinks. "

  "Home."

  "You are both welcome," said the prime minister.

  "We've got business. We'd better be leaving," said Remo, and he nudged Chiun.

  "Shortly we will be back and then your life will be as safe as your mother's should have been. We will sacrifice at the Ganges for her."

  "And may a thousand gods bring good fortune to you, Master of Sinanju. And also to your son."

  "Yeah, thanks," said Remo, nudging a litter bearer with his heel to speed their departure.

  Chiun was outraged all the way to Gupta, a two-day journey by train. Remo had met a ruler who wished to employ Sinanju and all he could say was, "Yeah, thanks." Where was Remo's training? Had he forgotten the laudations already, the praises for a king or a duke or a prince or a pharaoh?

  "Quite honestly, little father," said Remo, "I assumed the laudations for pharaohs were not something I was going to need right away."

  "It's good to learn. "

  "Why?"

  "Because it is proper training. The cloth is made of a thousand threads even if you don't see the crucial ones that hold the seams."

  "What good does it do me to know the lower kingdom has to be mentioned before the upper kingdom and that my voice must rise on the first inflection in Thebes, or that only during a drought should I mention Luxor or Abu Simbel to a pharaoh?"

  "Because it does," said Chiun. "You don't greet a friendly monarch with an American 'Yeah, thanks.' That's what you say to the lunatic Smith. Not to a real ruler who inherited a throne from his mother and may well give it to an heir, who just might have good work for the House of Sinanju."

  This said, Chiun refused to talk further and was silent through Patwar, Kanpur, Galior, Nagpur, Nizamabad, and Tirupati, until they reached the mountains that surrounded the valley of Gupta, where they saw the steep paths up to the mountain ridges.

  They could smell the strange odors of Cyclod B still lingering in the air-not strong enough to be harmful, for only they could sense it. But it was there nevertheless, faint hints of a substance that could fatally damage a nervous system. Remo and Chiun used different breathing patterns to keep their pores open. But other travelers hardly noticed the odor. There was a convoy of medical workers and of course truckloads and truckloads of American cameramen.

  A child was hit by a speeding army truck, and an American news team jumped out to interview him, while the mother tried to revive him.

  But as soon as they found out America wasn't responsible, one of the cameramen called out, "Nothing here. A hundred thousand people die like this every week. Doesn't mean anything."

  One of the newsmen wanted to interview Remo, but he dodged him. Chiun, seeing a camera, allowed himself to be spoken to.

  He was here for a vacation, he said, to be among his good friends in Gupta.

  "But most of them are dead," said the reporter.

  "Whoever is left," said Chiun.

  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 En
glish 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.

  "My son, who is also a friend of the prime minister, sometimes has strange feelings about the oddest things," said Chiun. "Now, Palul, let us turn ourselves to important things. I do not care about the valves either."