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 work 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.