"I'm surprised she's still alive, after all these years."
"She clings to life. She is a strong woman. Would you like to see her?"
"No," said Chiun.
"We're in a rush," said Remo. "Honest. Another time. "
"Another time then."
"How old is she anyway?"
"One hundred and three years old."
Remo called back, "Hear that, Chiun? She's older than even you!"
"I am only eighty." snapped the Master of Sinanju, "and you are embarrassing me in front of my ancestors."
"Your ancestors are lying in the ground and Nalini is just being polite. What's the matter with you?"
Chiun hurried on, skirts flapping, his hands fists.
The sound of a car window humming down caught Remo's attention. He turned his head and a face appeared in the rear window of the limousine from which Nalini had come.
The face was twisted, as if from paralytic stroke, but Remo recognized Pearl Clancy, matriarch of the Clancy clan. Her mouth hung slack-jawed and a tendril of drool leaked out and flowed into one of the webby wrinkle clusters around her mouth, which was grotesque with red lipstick.
"That's her, huh?" asked Remo.
"I will be just a moment, Adji," Nalini called. "That means Grandmother," she whispered to Remo.
Pearl Clancy seemed not to understand a single word. Staring so hard her eyes seemed to bug out of her head, she brought pale clawlike hands up to her clenched face.
As Remo watched, she made bony fists on either side of her mouth and popped her forefingers out. Then she began wriggling them angrily, as if pointing at Remo. She was bouncing up and down in her seat.
"Come on," said Nalini quickly.
"What was that all about?" Remo asked.
"She's easily upset when left alone. Alzheimer's."
"That's tough. It really is. Bad enough she had to suffer through two of her sons ending up dead and the third a public drunk."
"What did you say your business was, Remo?"
"We're here to look into HELP."
Nalini touched a finger to her mouth. "A terrible thing, all these deaths and no one knows why."
"By the time we're done, everyone will know why. And how. And probably who too."
"You sound very confident."
"When Chiun and I get on something like this," Remo said, surprised at his own boastful words, "we usually bust everything wide open."
''I see," said Nalini in a quiet voice. Remo found himself disappointed in her response. For some reason, he wanted to impress her very much.
Chiun had reached the car when they drew near. His face wore an impatient frown.
"Well, thanks for your help," Remo said.
"I am happy to. Tell me, where are you staying?"
"I don't know yet."
"There is a nice motel three miles beyond Ukiah. You might try that."
"Thanks, I will." Remo hesitated. Normally, he avoided entanglements when on assignment, but there was something about this dusky-skinned woman that caught his interest. "Gonna be here a few days?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Maybe I'll catch you around."
Nalini's smile was a shy ivory carving beneath the luminous jewels that were her dark eyes.
"Maybe I will allow you to catch me," she murmured.
And Remo smiled back.
He watched her walk away, her slim body swaying in time with the sari, and Remo thought he heard music.
Remo unlocked the door for Chiun and got behind the wheel. The Master of Sinanju's face was a thing carved out of stone.
"What's your problem?" Remo asked after they had started up the road.
"You let that harlot touch you."
"And?"
"She is a Hindu."
"So? She's a nice person. Anyone who would take care of an old dingbat like Pearl Clancy has to have a good heart."
"You did not hear what I said. She is a Hindu."
"I did hear you, and I don't care. I like her."
"Hindus only eat with their right hands."
"So?"
"You know what they do with their left hands."
"No. And knowing you, I don't want to hear."
"They wipe themselves," said Chiun. "Without toilet paper. That is why they do not eat with their left hands. Only their right."
"I knew I didn't want to hear it," said Remo, gunning the engine.
"Now you will need to wash yourself," Chiun sniffed.
"I'm sure Nalini is Americanized."
"Nevertheless, until you have washed the parts of your body that woman has touched, do not touch me."
"Oh brother. Anything else I should know in case I meet her again?"
"I did not like the color of her sari."
"What was wrong with it?"
"It is too vivid." Remo eyed Chiun's vermilion kimono. "Said the Korean fashion cop."
Chapter 9
Ukiah was smaller than Remo had expected. A tiny town of probably a thousand or so people. That limited the choice of hotels. There were two. And both had prominent ABSOLUTELY NO VACANCY signs lit up.
"Let's hope the motel Nalini told me about has some space," Remo said as they put the town behind them.
"It is no doubt infested with roaches if it serves Hindus," Chiun sniffed.
"Get off it, will you?"
"Only if you promise not to get on that Hindu."
"No deal."
Remo drove on and three miles up the road came to a little ticky-tacky nest of bungalow duplexes.
"Doesn't look so bad," Remo said.
As Remo pulled into the parking lot, the Master of Sinanju said, "This does not meet my modest standards."
Remo stabbed a finger out his window. "Look, see that sign? VACANCY. We're in luck. It may not look it, but we are."
"It is insufficient for my needs."
"After the press gets all the film and quotes they want, they're going to be descending on every fleabag motel from here to Oregon. We're just lucky they're so hot to get their stories they didn't bother to book their rooms first."
"I will consider it."
"Or you can sleep in the car."
"Only if you sleep in the trunk."
They went in.
The front desk was about the size of a kitchen table and had the same kind of green-flecked formica top. The man behind it was under thirty and had dirty blond hair.
"Greetings, innkeeper," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju. "We seek suitable lodgings."
"He means we want a room," said Remo.
"We will consider engaging a room if your establishment suits our needs," corrected Chiun.
"You run a wonderful establishment," said Remo, sliding a credit card across the formica countertop. "It comes highly recommended. Give us a bungalow."
"We will negotiate once we have interviewed your room service chef," proclaimed Chiun.
The desk clerk looked blank. "Room service chef?"
"You provide room service, of course," said Chiun.
"From time to time, yeah."
Chiun lifted his wide kimono sleeves to the ceiling. "Summon the illustrious purveyor of victuals."
"Purveyor of victuals?" undertoned Remo.
"We are in the West," whispered Chun, "I am speaking western."
"Yippie ti yo-yo," said Remo.
"Do you want a room or don't you?" the desk clerk demanded.
"I do," said Remo. "He's up in the air. Consider us separate clients."
The desk clerk looked unconvinced. "You gonna want room service?" he asked Remo.
"No."
"Good, because I reserve the right to refuse finicky guests. There're a bazillion press guys about two miles down the road and I foresee a long, busy night coming. "
"So do I. Where's my key?"
The desk clerk handed Remo a brass key which had a greasy green tag hanging from it with the room number written in faded ink.
"Unit sixteen," he said.
"Tha
nks," said Remo, signing the credit card slip.
"What about me?" squeaked the Master of Sinanju, his face as tight as a cobweb.
The desk clerk said, "You want room service, I got a night man who'll do a run to the Taco Hell. That's when things are slow. They won't be slow tonight."
"Taco Hell!" huffed Chiun, stamping his feet. "Remo, this is totally unacceptable."
"Not to me. And if I were you, pardner, I'd book a room quick because I feel a cool night coming on and that car looked mighty drafty to me."
"I will take the room adjoining this ingrate," said Chiun quickly. "Be sure to put it on his bill."
The desk clerk eyed Remo. "That okay with you, sir?"
Chiun snapped, "He has no say in these matters."
"Anything that placates him is fine with me," sighed Remo.
"Where does one find true food in these parts?" asked Chiun.
"True . . . ?"
"Rice . . . duck . . . fish."
"There's a Chinese restaurant in Ukiah. Yen Sin's. You might try that."
"Have their best dishes sent to my room and put it in on the white ingrate's bill," said Chiun.
"Sorry, the night man doesn't go into Ukiah. Only to the Taco Hell, which is just up the road."
"I'd have him make an exception in this case," Remo told the desk man.
"I don't see why I should."
The Master of Sinanju reached up and took the charge machine. He eyed it critically. The desk man became nervous.
"Don't drop that, sir."
Chiun looked up. "This contraption is important to you?"
"Definitely. Can't run the business without it."
Chiun nodded. "I will hold it for ransom until I have rice and steamed duck, or unseasoned fish, in my room."
"Sir, you don't want me to come around and take that away from you, do you?"
"I do not care what you do as long as I have proper room service," snapped the Master of Sinanju.
The desk clerk sighed and came out from behind his station.
He took hold of the charge machine before Remo could warn him. Chiun let him hold it long enough to get a good grasp. Then he rammed the heavy embossing slide from one end to the other, catching the desk man's fingers painfully.
His scream was exquisite. He lifted up on tippytoe, found a higher register, and his eyeballs in his upward-pointing face started looking like white grapes being squeezed from wrinkled pink baby fists.
Twenty minutes later, Remo and Chiun were seated on a very clean polyester rug in the middle of Chiun's bungalow room eating rice off fine china supplied by the wife of the desk man, who had been exceedingly grateful to discover that his fingerbones, once he recovered his hand, were miraculously whole.
"Not bad," said Remo.
Chiun made an unhappy face. "The rice has been boiled. I asked for steamed."
"Maybe they don't steam their rice out here."
"Steamed rice is best. Whites insist upon boiling it. Whites and Chinese who try to pass for white."
"Maybe it's the cowboy way of eating rice," Remo suggested airily.
"Do not be ridiculous, Remo," said Chiun, putting the rice aside and attacking his duck. "Cowboys eat cows. That is why they are called cowboys."
Without looking at the clock radio, Remo said, "I'd better call Smith before he leaves Folcroft for the night."
"Leave him be. Smith will not be pleased that we have discovered nothing."
"Smitty will worry if we don't call in. This new President has him antsier than I've seen him in a long time."
Harold Smith picked up on the first ring.
"Remo, what have you to report?"
"Not a heck of a lot. This place is lousy with press and politicians, my two least favorite kinds of people."
"No progress?"
"We seen the bugs, we've seen the bug-eaters and we've seen the bug-eaters eat the bugs. If that's progress, I'm on the wrong planet."
"There may be a break coming."
"Yeah?"
"I was listening to Thrush Limburger today-"
"You too?"
"Everyone listens to Thrush Limburger," said Smith. "At any rate, he is coming to Nirvana West."
"Yeah, I heard," Remo said sourly. "Just what we need-an ex-disk jockey to add to the festivities. All that was missing was a sound track, anyway."
"Limburger claims that on tomorrow's broadcast he will reveal the truth about HELP."
"What's the big deal? People are eating bugs and getting sick from it. The nuns who raised me taught me not to eat bugs when I was five."
"And you minded them?"
"No, I marched right out and ate the first bug I come upon. I think it was a firefly. After I got better, Sister Mary Margaret whacked my knuckles with a ruler and I never ate another bug again. What these dips need is a nun with an unbreakable ruler, and the so-called HELP plague is over."
"The deaths are spreading to the non-PAPA population," Smith said.
"They are?"
"It appears that these bugs are common in many areas of the country. Where they aren't, a black market has sprung up."
"Wait a minute! You mean even though people are dying from eating this bug, they're paying money for the privilege?"
"How is that different from cocaine use, or gourmets who eat wild mushrooms, or puffer fish, which if improperly prepared can kill?"
"I still don't get it."
"That is because you have had a proper upbringing. But the President is very concerned. He has not said so in any specific way, but I believe we and CURE are on probation. As you know, there is talk of folding the CIA into the State Department, which would save five billion taxpayer dollars. Our budget is much greater than that. He is looking at us closely."
"Do tell."
"We must show results, Remo. I am counting on you."
"We'll do our best. Talk to you tomorrow."
Remo hung up and returned to his spot on the rug.
"You heard every word, didn't you?" he asked Chiun.
"I do not eavesdrop."
"You don't have to. You have the ears of a fox."
Chiun raised a correcting finger. "I have the ears of an owl. A fox's ears are ugly."
"Thrush Limburger is definitely coming here. He's supposed to have the whole thing figured out."
"Why are you telling me things I already know?"
"I ask myself that question all the time. Look, I know you're a Limburger fan-God knows why-but remember, we're on a secret mission."
"To save America from its latest vice, bug eating. What would this country do without us to save it from itself?"
"Dry up and blow away like the Roman Empire, I guess." Remo started for the door, saying, "I'll see you in the morning."
"Remember to shower."
At the door, Remo turned. "Why do you say that?"
"You reek of that woman."
Remo sniffed his arm. The scent of Nalini was on the spot on his arm where she touched him. It brought a smile to his face. "And here I thought it was just her memory haunting me."
"Pah," said Chiun.
In his room, Remo stripped the bed. He couldn't sleep on most beds anymore. At home, a reed mat on the floor was all the bed he needed. This mattress was too lumpy. So he laid the sheet on the rug, stripped to his underwear, and lay down.
He couldn't sleep. He kept thinking of Nalini. He had liked her smile. He thought it was the tantalizing memory keeping him awake, when he remembered the perfume on his arm. That was what was keeping him awake.
Remo washed his arms in soap and hot water, which got rid of most of the scent. But not all of it. He threw up a window which let in cool air and a sound like an adenoidally challenged gander.
Chiun snored in the next room. He had left his window open too.
Remo willed out the sound, then all sounds, and after a last lingering recollection of Nalini's low, musical voice, he fell into a deep sleep.
Somewhere past three A.M., Remo awoke. Something wa
s crawling along his arm and his first thought was roach.
Remo gave his arm a shake, and he heard something tick against the wall. He went back to sleep. Ten minutes later, the sensitive hairs on his forearm triggered an alarm, and this time he slapped the insect with his fingers, killing it.
Then he flicked the dead thing off, rolled over, and fell into a slumber that lasted until the break of dawn and the first raucous cries of bluejays.
He dreamed of Nalini. In his dream, he was a teenager again, before CURE, before the electric chair that hadn't worked had catapulted patrolman Remo Williams into his new life as the heir apparent to the House of Sinanju.
He and Nalini were walking down lower Broad Street in Newark, New Jersey, where he had grown up.
They were eating ice cream cones, and even in sleep, Remo tasted his because he had not eaten an ice cream cone or a dairy product or most foods since he had come to Sinanju, the sun source of the martial arts. His cone was cherry vanilla. Nalini's was chocolate fudge. He was looking at her's and wondering if he offered her a taste of his cone, would she return the favor.
They turned a corner and coming up it was Sister Mary Margaret, a wraith in black-and-white. Her eyes were steely. And she was carrying a steel ruler which she flicked. Out snapped a straight razor that was rusty with dried blood.
Remo pulled Nalini back and they got three blocks before the Master of Sinanju appeared, blocking their path.
His yellow hands came out of the sleeves of his bone white kimono and the nails attached to the ends of his fingers were long and curved and also the color of bone.
The Master of Sinanju bared his teeth like an enraged tiger, and from between his tiny white teeth came a sibilant hissing.
Remo woke up tasting cherry ice cream and smelling Nalini's perfume. He found himself looking forward to seeing her again. It had been a long time since he had looked forward to seeing a woman. A long time.
It was one of the downsides of Sinanju that while Remo had through correct breathing, stringent diet, and exercise techniques become absolute master of every cell in his body, and a literal killing machine, the techniques that cover the sexual act were focused on reducing the opposite sex to quivering jelly, which was nice, for the express purpose of fathering children, which was not currently on Remo's agenda. Sinanju sex techniques were so rigid and foolproof that no woman could resist them, and the practitioner, in this case Remo, might as well be wiring up a car stereo for all the pleasure he got out of it.
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