Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

  Chiun folded his long fingernails into his flowing robes.

  "We can get your steamer trunks later," Remo said.

  "Nothing for you to worry about. They are just my dearest treasures," said Chiun. "Why should I be able to rescue even that meager portion of joy for my life? I have brought a white into Sinanju and now I must pay."

  "I'll get them now."

  "No," said Chiun. "Do not bother your selfish heart."

  "I will."

  "I see the taxi," said Chiun.

  "He'll wait. I'll carry them on my back."

  "I will forego them. I would not trouble the selfish. It is against your nature to do something

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  for another, even for one who has done so much for you."

  "I want to," Remo said.

  "Yes. I know you do. Carry a trunk. By white arithmetic that equals thousands of years of the powers of the universe. I give you one precious gem, you carry a bag. Well, you're not dealing with some bumpkin from a small fishing village in the West Korea Bay. You can't cheat me like that. Come, we go."

  "The bags aren't here, are they?" said Remo.

  "It doesn't matter that they were shipped days ago to a picking-up point. What matters is that you thought carrying them equaled what I gave you. That's what mattered. That's why I am here. I must see with my own eyes the degradation to which you have put the sun source of all hand fighting. I must suffer this evil because I have created it. And you will never cheat me again by carrying a bag."

  And thus did Chiun, having planned all along to go with Remo, escape not only having to admit so, but once again showing how the world ill repaid his awesome kindness and decency.

  The business Remo was going into, taking his skills with him, was advertising. Chiun knew of advertising and they discussed this on the Delta flight out of West Palm Beach to New York City.

  Chiun knew of advertising. Before soap operas had been degraded by including the unpleasant things of life, Chiun had watched all of them closely and in so doing had become aware of the selling of household products in America. They were, he knew, mostly poisons.

  "You will not be handling soaps?" asked Chiun,

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  horrified at the thought of burning lye and fat on Remo's skin. He had been so pale when Chiun had gotten him for training years before and now with the health back in his skin, Chiun did not want it washed away with American poisons.

  "No. I'm going to demonstrate a product."

  "You are not going to put white chemicals in your body?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "Aha," said Chiun and there was joy in his face for he knew. "How could I have misjudged my training? How could I have felt you would desecrate what I have taught you? My gift is beyond desecration."

  "Little Father," said Remo hesitantly. "I don't think you understand."

  "Of course I understand. Americans may be white but they are not complete fools. They will say look, look at the wonders of Sinanju and you will demonstrate on some boxer or whoever they think is strong the awesomeness of Sinanju. And then they will say Sinanju has its power by eating one of whatever they are selling. And then you will say you have eaten that as part of your training, which also explains the greater mystery of why they have asked you to demonstrate and not me. I have one request. When you say how good the product is and you put it in your mouth, chew, don't swallow, because all American food is poison."

  "It's not that, Little Father. I'm not going to demonstrate Sinanju."

  "Oh. I feared that," Chiun said and he was quiet until just over New York City when he had a question. "Will you appear on television?"

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  "Yes."

  "Are you not supposed to be modest and secret? You do everything so that people will not recognize our glories. This is part of your inscrutable white character. But your face will surely be recognized."

  "They won't be filming my face. They'll be filming my hands."

  And Chiun thought about that too but he knew it was foolish because Remo's hands would never be able to show how mild a soap was. They were more sensitive than women's hands. And that was for women's commercials for women's soaps. Men's commercials sold soaps strong enough to be used as tortures.

  It was a vicious white cycle. First they ate meat fats that gave them a rancid flavor, then they scrubbed off the putrescence with poisons.

  "If not soap, what?" asked Chiun.

  "Do you remember the first exercises for the hands?"

  "Which one? There are so many."

  "The orange," said Remo.

  "Peeling," said Chiun.

  "Right. The one where I learned that the hand is a function of the spinal cord by peeling an orange with one hand."

  "It's hard for children," said Chiun.

  "Well, I was doing it at the marina and I met this investor and ..."

  As Remo told the story, it was a typical tale of disaster, starting out with a wonderful idea and lots of money. A growth company with a knack for massive fast profits got a report on home-tool use, showing the kitchen area was "about to

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  maximize a new base growth," which meant that people were going to spend more money on kitchen things.

  The report said many expensive gadgets were going to be sold, and if someone could offer a competitive but cheaper gadget, they could make a fortune using television advertising.

  So the marketing people told the engineers they wanted a kitchen gadget that could chop and puree, grind and slice, and sell at $7.95. It should also dice carrots. It should cost less than 55 cents to make and less than 22 cents to mail. It should be no larger than two average coffee cups and be made of red plastic and clear plastic with a piece of shiny metal in it, because surveys showed red plastic and clear plastic with shiny metal were looked upon favorably by 77.8 percent of American women.

  The engineers did a miraculous job filling every requirement. Marketing said they could sell ten million in a month with an advertising budget that was included in the 55 cents production cost.

  Tears had come to the man's eyes as he told Remo that the 55 cents included the advertising budget. At this point in his story, the man had cursed the fates and the unknown mysteries.

  Chiun listened to Remo relate this story as they left the airplane. He had never understood white thinking but he had to admit they made good airplanes and television sets and, before viciousness and wanton sexuality had overtaken them, good daytime dramas called soap operas. What was wrong with the American product, wondered Chiun.

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  "It didn't work," said Remo. "Guy said everything was perfect but it didn't work. Now they've got a couple of million of those doohickies in a warehouse and if they don't start moving them in the next couple of days, they start to lose money. He's got it down to the fraction of a penny."

  "I do not see how a simple exercise such as peeling an orange would have anything to do with his product," said Chiun.

  "When he saw me peel the orange, he thought I might be able to use the Vega-Choppa."

  "Vega-Choppa?" said Chiun, motioning a taxi outside the airport to move on because its insides were not clean enough. The driver said that if Chiun wanted to wait for a clean cab, he would have to move to the end of the line.

  The driver was later treated at Queens Memorial Hospital.

  Chiun got a clean cab into New York. "I always like these flesh-colored vehicles when they are clean," he confided to Remo. "Now what is a Vega-Choppa?"

  "That's the gadget. Computers worked out the name. It's some plastic junk and a strip of metal, seven dollars and ninety-five cents. He figured if I could peel the orange I could do the commercial for it with my hands."

  "And did you?"

  "That's where we're going now. See, they couldn't sell the thing on television 'cause they couldn't find anybody to demonstrate it. But he had one and it's no big thing. It's timing, if you have your timing, you can cut carrots and tomatoes and everything. It'd be easier to do it w
ith a

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  broken bottle, but I'm not getting paid to do it with a broken bottle."

  At the studio, the lights were on and the camera crews were ready. Chiun watched disdainfully. The Vega-Choppa was the size of a woman's hand.

  Remo got his instructions on which vegetables to cut first. This would be photographed while the announcer read the cue cards in front of him.

  There were ripe tomatoes, a banana, a bunch of carrots, and a head of lettuce on a wooden table. Many lights shone on the table.

  A small intense woman put sleeves, without arms, on Eemo's thick wrists. The sleeves were the same color as the jacket on the announcer. A table identical to Remo's was wheeled in front of the announcer. Another table with artistically cut vegetables was uncovered to the far right. The announcer was in the center and Remo was at the left.

  There were three cameras and not one was focused on Chiun, who made a mental note to add to the history of Sinanju, under the chapters of "Chiun and the Americans," how American taste in entertainment was highly peculiar, as one might expect from beefeaters.

  "We're going to do something very dangerous," came a voice from the dark part of the studio. "We're going to shoot all this live, on tape, without the voice being dubbed. That's the kind of faith we have in this product and, of course, you, sir, what's your name?"

  "Remo."

  "What's your first name?"

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  "That is my first name."

  "Well, we'll just call you 'Hands,' all right? When you see the light, begin."

  "Call me Remo, not 'Hands.' "

  Two lights on two cameras flashed red. Remo waited.

  "You want a food machine?" asked the announcer as Remo picked up the Vega-Choppa and a tomato. "You want to pay one hundred or two hundred dollars or more and then run up electricity bills? Or do you want a magic food machine in your hands?"

  Gripping the blade of the Vega-Choppa lightly, Remo threw it toward the hand with the tomato in it. Chiun alone could see through the speed of it that Remo's hands were pressing the tomato around the blade, an intricate maneuver very much like pressing flower petals into bamboo strips, so that the petals were not damaged but the strips were cracked. Remo did this several times, so that the blending of the tomato around the blade looked as if the blade was cutting the tomato into slices.

  "Tomatoes are a cinch," said the announcer. "You slice as many as you want and when you're done, perhaps you want cole slaw. You say you can't make cole slaw without shredding? Hours and hours of shredding? Don't pay high prices for slaw in your supermarket. Now, hours of drudgery and high supermarket prices are gone. You have slaw as easily as tomatoes or potatoes or diced carrots or apples that peel magically with your Vega-Choppa."

  Remo's hands flew. He got the blade going back and forth by compressing the action through the

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  vegetables, a technique of hand action known to Sinanju since the time of Genghis Khan, when certain tribes used reed shields that were quite effective against metal spears.

  If a student were talented, he could master this in eight years of training.

  Out of Remo's sight, Chiun nodded approval. The hands were working well. Unfortunately, no one other than Chiun could appreciate the esoteric and incredibly skilled function now being performed and labeled "as easy as apple pie," the apple now being shredded into little slices.

  "And what does this miracle tool cost ? Not one hundred dollars. Not fifty dollars. Not even twenty-five dollars. It's just seven ninety-five and with it-if you send in your order within six days-you get the miracle carrot peeler."

  With only a useless sliver of shiny metal, Remo scraped the skin of a carrot and Chiun had to force himself not to applaud. It was so difficult to manipulate the peeler that Remo could have skinned the carrot more easily with his knuckles.

  "And carrots," said the announcer. "As easy as that."

  It was a good performance. So easy had Remo made it look that when the cameras were off, the announcer just wanted to slice a tomato to see the even round pieces fall like playing cards.

  He was unable to break the skin of the tomato and finally leaned on the Vega-Choppa with both hands, creating a popping mush, and getting a gouge in his thumb and forefinger that needed five stitches to close.

  Chiun was proud but sad. Remo had used his skills well, but in a wrong cause, and if the rest of

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  Remo's life was to be spent demonstrating tools that no one could use, then Chiun would have to think seriously of finding another student to build into a new Master of Sinanju.

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  She saw the hands. She saw them on the TV screen and she knew it was him. She stopped yelling at workmen repairing the glass in the front of her wig factory and shop, the finest wig shop in Norfolk, Virginia-unless of course you wanted something in a cheaper line, like rayon, which was not only blonder but could wash better and wear longer. And when you got tired of looking like a giant yellow mum, it made the best mattress stuffing this side of down. The Gonzalez Wig Emporium also sold down, imitation down, stuffing, life insurance, and Jesus bracelets that fought gout.

  She stopped yelling and she looked.

  "Remo," she said.

  "What ?" said one of the workmen.

  "Keep sweepin', nigger," said Ruby Gonzalez who was just a partial shade lighter than the brown workman. She knew she wasn't beautiful but she had an attractive presence that would not quit; when she set her eyes on a man, she could make him hers.

  And maybe that was what was needed now, because she had just seen the hands of a man who could do miracles. Who might be able to get Lu-

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  cius back-Lucius, who had been dragged screaming out of the shop, screaming, until the attackers could get a needle into him. No one knew who had seized the fourteen missing men and still a week later no one knew where they were. Although Ruby had her suspicions. But what good were suspicions when you didn't have the muscle?

  And special muscle she needed. Some dummy with a gun would not do. She had seen them. If they got the guy you wanted, they more than likely shot up half a town. Norfolk was a quiet town. She got along in Norfolk. She had friends in Norfolk. Ruby didn't want to shoot up the town to get her brother back. With the help of those hands on television she might be able to.

  Remo. She had never been able to find him again.

  It was at a time she was working for the government, when because of her black blood and Spanish surname and female gender she had become an entire equal opportunity program in the hands of the CIA. She meant that they didn't have to hire quite as many blacks, women, or Spanish surnames. Which was not all that bright, Ruby knew, because she was the only one in her department who didn't make a botch of things.

  For a woman of twenty-three, she was wise in the ways of the world. She was not afraid her country was going to be devastated by some great sinister foreign intelligence agency. She understood very well that most white men were stupid. As were black men. And yellow men. And that included the white man and the yellow man she had met on assignment in Baqia, one of those stupid

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  places nobody wanted until somebody else was about to get it.

  She had never been able to find a trace of them again. Remo's fingerprints were not on file anywhere her friends could get to. It was like he and Chiun had vanished, but here she saw those hands on TV, just when she needed them most.

  "Mama, Mama," she yelled, running to the small apartment above the shop. Mama liked living here. Ruby lived in a mansion out of town. She had offered her mother several rooms in the Gonzalez mansion in Princess Anne County, but her mother wanted to stay with her old friends in Norfolk. Mama also liked to eat. Mama was not allowed to eat in the mansion. Ruby had it up for resale and she didn't want crumbs on the floor.

  "Mama, Mama," cried Ruby. "I think we can save Lucius."

  Mama sat in a blue painted rocking chair smoking a pipe. Mama
smoked chicory, corn silk, and dried maple leaf ground together. Some said this combination caused neither bronchitis nor cancer nor any other disease, because it acted not so much like a carcinogen as a razor. It would lacerate your throat before it would pollute it.

  Most people passed out from sniffing it. Ruby had grown up with it.

  "They gonna save Lucius?" asked Mama, her tired face a rich deep black, the wrinkles warm with many a weary year of going on from day to day.

  "No. We're gonna save him," Ruby said.

  The old woman thought about this a long moment. She took a deep puff on her corncob pipe.

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  "Chile?" she said.

  "Yes, Mama," said Ruby.

  "What yo' want to do that for? He de most useless chile in this Lord's creation."

  "He's my brother, Mama."

  "I'm sorry about that, chile, but sometimes I think maybe dey made a mistake at de hospital, ceppin' I didn' go to no hospital. Maybe we made a mistake on de kitchen table."

  "Mama, that's Lucius we're talking about. He may be hurt."

  "Only if he working. That boy only hurt when he work. Sometime ah think maybe we get him mixed up with a loaf of bread or something that day on de kitchen table but then ah remembers we only eats white bread. And sometimes ah try to pictorialize zactly in my mind what we throw away in de kitchen that day. Was it de afterbirth or Lucius that got dumped wif de garbage? Ah use to think we kept de afterbirth, but afterbirth don' eat, doit?"

  "No, Mama."

  "Then that's Lucius. De eatenest baby ah ever see."

  "Mama, he's been kidnapped."

  "Ah know. His bed be empty from nine in the morning to five at night, Monday until Friday, all this week. Ah know something be wrong."

  "I'm going to get him back," Ruby said. "And I know how. There are two men who can do miracles, Mama, and I've just seen their hands on television. I'm going to get him back. Lucius is a good boy."

  "Lucius de most useless chile in dis here country. He don't even pick up welfare checks.