Fool's Gold

by Warren Murphy

  So the armored corps made do with a 1948 Studebaker with an extra layer of tin on the outside, held in place by zircon studs, naturally spelling out "Crush the world beneath our treads."

  A foreign manufacturer had once gotten to the armored corps and convinced its officers that they should have tanks, under the reasoning that other countries' armored corps had tanks. Many tanks. Big tanks. And with treads.

  How did it look for Hamidia to have a slogan: "Crush the world beneath our treads" when it didn't even have treads, but four 1949 Firestone Silverrides, three of which were bald?

  "You not only don't have treads, you don't even have traction," said the manufacturer.

  "That all right, Señor. We don't have much engine either," said one of the officers. But the idea caught on and the armored corps was close to rebellion when Moombasa, being a shrewd Third World politician, recognized the meaning of the revolutionary ferment in the souls of his valiant warriors.

  "Great heroes of the Hamidian revolution, I will follow your desires. We can buy a tank that only a few can use at one time, or we can buy new cravats for everyone, beige to offset the robin's-egg blue of your glorious uniforms."

  There was instant outrage among the Hamidian officer corps.

  "Beige don' go with robin's-egg blue. Navy blue. Black even. Maybe a dark green. But not beige."

  "I am a foot soldier," said Generalissimo Moombasa. "What do I know of armored warfare and you brave men who carry it out?" And then he ordered the cravats, one of which he now wore. He realized that he could really trust his tank commanders. He ordered navy-blue cravats and found out that they were right. The navy blue really went well with the robin's-egg blue.

  Moombasa was dressed when Neville Lord Wissex arrived, wearing a gray coat, top hat, white gloves. But no woman.

  "Where is the woman? Where is my woman? Where is the reader of the ancient tongue of the Hamidian traders?"

  "She is with her bodyguards. All the snipers you saw here last week are no more. They are dead," said Lord Wissex.

  Moombasa couldn't believe his ears. The man was calm. Wissex was talking without a tremor in his voice and the man was telling him he did not have what Moombasa had paid well for.

  "You failed," screamed the generalissimo.

  "Yes," said Wissex.

  "That's it? Yes? Just yes? Ten million dollars and you are telling me yes?"

  "Yes," said Lord Wissex.

  "He is telling me yes," said Moombasa to an aide. The aide nodded and offered a suggestion.

  "Shoot him."

  "Let's find out first why he is not afraid," said Moombasa.

  "Then we shoot him," said the aide.

  "Sure," said Moombasa.

  "Hey, you. Brit. Where is the woman who reads Hamidian? Where is the mountain of gold? Where the things I pay for?"

  "In stronger hands than ours, your Excellency," said Wissex.

  Moombasa liked the way the Briton said "your Excellency." It had class and made him feel kingly. It made him feel that perhaps he could go to Buckingham Palace, possibly even cop a feel there. If not the queen, perhaps a princess or two.

  "What stronger hands?" he asked.

  "Major nations against whom I would advise you not to compete," said Wissex blandly.

  "Why you can't beat them? Those major nations, are they big shots?"

  "We could beat them," Wissex said.

  "Then why you not do it?"

  "Because it would be a strain on your economy. We have to move technologically, sustain losses, advance despite those losses. I wanted to give you what a backward nation could afford."

  "Hey, what you say?"

  "Your Excellency?" asked Wissex.

  "What you say there? That word?"

  "What word?"

  "Backward," said Moombasa.

  "You have no industry. You have no road system or telephone system that works. No hospitals that aren't staffed by Europeans at the higher levels, no air force that works without European direction, and you produce absolutely nothing except more Hamidians."

  "We produce oil and cobalt."

  "Americans produce it," Wissex said. "You, I am afraid, just lay title to it because you were born here, Excellency. That is what you produce. And with the money from materials that Americans mine and drill for, you buy Americans, ambassadors, journalists, and of course the leftists whom you get for nothing. I have not forgotten your trying to pawn off Myra Waxelburg and Dudley Rawlingate III as some sort of Vanguard Revolutionary Suicide squad."

  Moombasa looked at his aide. Such insults. No one called backward nations backward anymore. They emerging or developing or Third World. You didn't go to no ugly woman in the street and say you ugly. So you didn't call no Third World nations what they were either. And here was this man who took his money calling the People's Democratic Republic of Hamidia what it was.

  Moombasa felt blood come up hot from his toes. He didn't want to shoot the Brit that moment because then he couldn't have the joy of killing him again. He thought of fire. Slow fire under the feet. Burn off his toenails. Put out his eyes. Peel away his chest. And the generalissimo felt himself chuckling. His aides moved away in fear. Everyone left but Neville Lord Wissex.

  "So, being a backward nation, I would advise against your spending another ten million on a technological phase assault that may produce absolutely nothing. That may not even gain for you that mountain of gold which belongs to you and is worth perhaps tens of trillions of dollars."

  "How many zeroes that?" asked Moombasa.

  "At least twelve in your counting," said Wissex.

  "Spend, you British dog," Moombasa said.

  "It's too much for you to handle."

  "I say spend," Moombasa said.

  "Well. If you say so."

  "I demand so," said Moombasa. "Demand. I will give it to you in cash. And there is more where that came from."

  Moombasa was, of course, talking about his personal wealth. By now it exceeded the national treasury five-fold. But his honor had been insulted. He hardly listened to the Brit explain that the three were now in St. Maarten but would soon be in Bombay where a trap would be laid. The words about these assassins using the human body better than anyone ever had before meant nothing to him. Nothing.

  "And so in ancient Bombay these ancient assassins will fall beneath the most modern of technology," Wissex said.

  "And there's more where that came from," said Moombasa.

  But later, when Wissex left, Moombasa reflected and decided that he would do a little work on his own. Just to protect his investment, which had now grown to $20 million.

  "Bombay," said Terri Pomfret, returning from the beach on the western, the French side, of the island of St. Maarten. She noticed that Remo hadn't tanned even though he was lying out in the sun.

  She set the rubbing of the Hamidian inscription on the table of their balcony facing the calm bay, under the hot white sun.

  Word by word, phrase by phrase, she translated the coordinates of the sailing merchants and the descriptions of the ancient people to whose city the mountain of gold had been moved.

  "In their time, this city would have to be Bombay and the people would have to be Indian and I'm certain they refer to the Temple of the goddess Gint. That was my main clue. She is the goddess of inner peace and exists only at the city limits of Bombay. Simple, You see?"

  She looked around for approval, but Chiun merely continued to stare off at the horizon. Remo yawned and continued not to tan.

  "Why don't you tan?" she said.

  "Don't want to."

  "You know, you have a basically hostile personality."

  "Why not?" Remo said.

  Terri did not speak to him all the way on the three different flights to India. She noticed he did not sleep much either, perhaps fifteen minutes a night.

  "I suppose you won't tell me why you need so little sleep either," she said.

  "I'll tell you but you won't understand," he said.

  "T
ry me."

  "I sleep more intensely. There are different levels of sleep and I sleep all of them at once. You see, with me, I am in control of body functions that you're not in control of. Tanning, everything. I can tan because I can control the element in my skin that tans. Or I can not tan."

  "Ask a silly question and you get an absolutely stupid answer," said Dr. Terri Pomfet.

  There were two problems with the Bombay Airport. One was that Remo, Chiun, and Terri were photographed by some lunatic wearing a Gunga Din costume, who kept sneaking around, trying not to be noticed and was therefore noticed.

  The bigger problem with Bombay Airport was that it was downwind from a great concentration of Indians. It was downwind from the city and from the river it used as a refuse system for its sewage. When there was sewage. Mainly, the Indians just used the streets.

  Tourist photographs of the city showed only the colors, the beautiful pastels, the fetching eyes peering out over diaphanous veils, the beautiful domed temples, the exquisitely carved nose rings, stately beige oxen walking down through the ages of man.

  Photographs did not show what the oxen left behind them.

  Stories never mentioned what Terri had to go through as she set foot off the plane and began retching with the other tourists who were now experiencing exciting India, moral leader of the Third World.

  The tourist group's Indian guide explained how India was based on democratic principles and the highest moral values of mankind. What was even better was that the tourists didn't have to worry about pickpockets because the local police dealt with pickpockets by sticking pins in their eyes, very effectively blinding them forever.

  "So we have two things. A moral order of the highest plane and safe streets."

  But no one listened to the guide. Eyes teared up over handkerchiefs and people were giving up their beautiful Air India lunches which had been served with flowers. Now everyone knew why India grew such luxurious flowers.

  "Plant 'em in the air and they'll be fertilized," said one tourist.

  Terri looked up to Remo and Chiun who were walking along, obviously unbothered by the stench.

  "How do you do it?" she gasped.

  "We don't breathe as much when we don't want to," Remo said.

  "Bastard," said Terri. "You joke now."

  "I could help you but you are going to have to trust me."

  "I'd rather vomit," said Terri.

  "You make too much noise retching," said Remo, and he pressed Terri's spine and removed some of the tension in her stomach and spinal column.

  "Breathe deep," he said.

  "I can't."

  "Yes, you can." Remo closed her nose and covered her mouth with his free hand. He let the oxygen debt build up red in her face and then released her. Terri gagged in a complete lungful of air.

  She looked around startled. She waited to vomit. But suddenly the air was breathable. There was no smell to it.

  "What did you do?" she asked Remo.

  "I acclimated you quickly. You can't smell it because India is now a part of you. Don't breathe seeds, though, or you'll have flowers coming out of your mouth in no time."

  "Well, thanks anyhow," said Terri.

  In rapid-fire Korean, Chiun told Remo that one should never expect gratitude from the pitiful because when they were relieved of their burden of stupidity, they always turned on their benefactors.

  "How can you say that?" asked Remo. "That's not always the case."

  "It was with you," said Chiun and he chuckled and Remo knew that Chiun's trip to India had just been made worthwhile by that single remark.

  "Heh, heh, it was with you," Chiun repeated. "Heh, heh."

  "Your Master of Sinanju seems so happy, it is always a pleasure to be around him," said Terri, who still could not understand the street Korean that Chiun had spoken to Remo.

  Far off in a little valley they could see the pink-domed temples of the goddess Gint. Lustrous glass filled curving apertures in the many windows of the goddess' home. Poles reflecting silver and gold and emeralds glistened before the delicate jade and ivory archways.

  "I don't see the mountain," said Terri.

  "You will find another sign," Chiun said.

  "How do you know?" asked Terri.

  "Someone tried this every so often," Chiun said. "You would think they would learn." But he would explain no more.

  The paving leading to the pool was inlaid with ivory upon polished marble. Pictures of the goddess Gint consorting with the god of thunder were everywhere.

  A pack of the faithful stood before one of the priests. They wore rags and he wore just a loincloth and lay on his back upon a bed of sharpened spikes.

  It was this proof of body control that let him speak to the multitudes. He had not only been trained as a priest of Gint but had been to the London School of Economics, where he learned to hate America.

  He also hated Britain, France, West Germany and all the Western industrialized countries. This was easy to come by in London where he had been exposed to what he and most of the other Third World students really hated about the West. They weren't part of it.

  Seeing Remo and Terri, he spoke in English to the multitudes.

  "Here they are. The imperialists. Why don't you have skyscrapers like they have? Because they have exploited them from you. Why don't you have as many shirts as they have? Because they have many shirts while you do not even have one. Is that fair? They consume so much of the resources of the world that you have nothing. They ride around in big cars while you walk on bare feet. Is that fair? There they are. The imperialists come to step on you."

  Thus spoke the fakir dedicated to the goddess Gint. Now the beggars who stood around did not understand English but the fakir knew the talk was not for them, for they had no coins for his begging bowl. It was for the Americans themselves, because if you called Americans or Britons imperialist exploiters, they would put bills in your bowl. Especially American women who were stupid enough to believe that if Americans had fewer shirts, somehow Indians would have more.

  The Britons were not as good for this, sometimes thinking things through. But American women were absolutely splendid, believing that somehow American use of bauxite and petroleum deprived people in loincloths of something they would otherwise use.

  The fakir saw the American man approach. He could see that his speech had gotten to the woman but the American's man's face was hard to read.

  "Exploiter of the masses, have you come to step on us? Have you come to steal our bauxite? Are you robbing us of our manganese and ferrous oxide?"

  The fakir lifted his head very gently for a sudden move on his bed or nails would let the sharpened spikes pierce his backbone.

  "Pig. Brutalizer. Robber," he said to Remo and Terri. Terri put fifteen dollars American into the bowl. Remo stepped up and onto the fakir, pressing him down into his nails, making sure the upper back went down with the first step so there would be no more noise out of the mouth.

  The fakir lay there embedded on his spikes. Remo took back Terri's fifteen dollars and gave it to the crowd.

  Terri looked at the fakir, the crowd, the fakir, Remo, and the fakir again, Already flies were settling on him.

  "Why... what did you do that for?" she gasped.

  "Listen, if he says I came to step on him, who am I to prove him wrong?"

  "You're the ugly American. Absolutely," she said.

  "Why not?" said Remo and the day was good.

  Terri turned to Chiun. "Did you see him? He just killed a man. For no reason at all. A poor simply holy man speaking the truth as he knew it."

  Chiun said nothing but Remo snapped, "I don't know what the matter is with you, but you seem to take some malignant anti-American crap and invest it with virtue. You don't know what he was talking about. Maybe he was ragging the crowd to mob us. Would you rather have seen me kill the crowd?"

  "All this death all the time. Why, why, why?" asked Terri.

  "Because, because, because," said Remo. />
  "That's not an answer."

  "It is for me," Remo said.

  "You beast," said Terri.

  And in Korean, Chiun said to Remo about the fakir now impaled on his bed of nails, "I always wanted to do that. I always wanted to do that."

  Terri did not understand what he said, but she said, "That's right, Chiun. You tell him that professional assassins don't kill wantonly."

  "It seemed right," Remo said to Chiun in Korean.

  "Don't listen to him," Terri said to Chiun. "He could corrupt you."

  "If you see another one," Chiun said in Korean, "He's mine. I don't know why we never thought of that before."

  "You've got to be special," said Remo with pride.

  "I am," said Chiun. "That's why I don't know why I never thought of that before."

  Suddenly Terri sobbed. "I hate you," she sputtered at Remo. "I hope the mob does mob us. How's that?"

  "No. They only go after you if you look weak. They'll never attack anyone who steps a fakir into his nails," Remo said.

  Terri looked. It was true. All the beggars were looking at the punctured corpse as a curiosity. No one was bothering them. One of them peeled off the corpse's loincloth to use as his own.

  According to legend, the goddess Gint mated with the forces of the universe to create the god of dark places.

  Gint herself was said to have murdered a part of the day which people would never see again. It was not morning or evening, but was supposed to occur shortly after noon and according to legend, was a cool and dark moment, a brief respite from the hot Indian sun.

  This did Gint take into her bosom and away from mankind. Naturally, it made her one of the India's most beloved goddesses. She was widely regarded as the benefactress of schemes, and the cult of Gint was one of the richest in India.

  Yet this day as Remo and Chiun accompanied Terri into the temple looking for more Hamidian writing, no one was tending the flowers or the candles or the sweetmeats set at the feet of the goddess' statue.

  Gint had seven breasts and according to Indian mythology eight sons, who promptly destroyed the weakest by cutting off his lips so he could not eat.

  Seeing how much more milk there was, the strongest son decided to take all the breasts for himself and when his brothers were suckling, bit off the backs of their heads. Angered, Gint ordered her remaining son never to drink her milk again but to drink the dark brackish waters in small ponds and to live forever as a mud slug.