Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

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  When de mail was late dat week, he call de mayor, saying dems oppressin' him. Dat boy never did a lick of work in his life. Boy even gave up muggin' 'cause people stopped walkin' down dat alley behind de shop. He say he am' traveling to work no ways."

  An ordinary executive might have been turned off in her search for the owner of the hands. But Kuby Gonzalez, owner of Wig Emporium, Wig City, a wig factory, two real estate agencies, a mail order house, and director of four banks, was not about to be put off by some clerk just because he had the title of vice president for marketing.

  "Madam, let me assure you we used only a regular announcer for that commercial, an announcer who has been doing these things for years. We did not import specialized skills for the easy operation of the miracle Vega-Choppa, the bestselling kitchen appliance since the pot. Heh, heh."

  "Turkey, I know those hands. Now you going to help me or not help me ?"

  "We have been one of the leading ad agencies in America since our inception in Philadelphia in 1873. We do not engage in fraud."

  Within forty minutes, Ruby had a history of the ad agency showing it had begun with a flyer claiming Dr. Magic's Wonder Grease cured brain tumors, and in 1943 had been indicted for claiming cigarette smoking promoted sexual vitality, clear skin, and long life.

  When they met again, the vice president for marketing admitted to Ruby that the hands she saw were represented by a major talent agency

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  that handled actors and writers. The hands had been given to a young agent because no one knew what to do with hands. The agent generally represented marginal writers. By marginal, the agency meant that if one of their agents had to do more than pick up a telephone to get a half million-dollar advance on a book, the writer of the book was marginal.

  The hands had been rejected at the actor's section of the agency because both the man and his Oriental friend lacked what Hollywood considered "an essential sense of danger. We don't get a feeling that the hands have a person attached to them who can give the audience that sense of danger we get from leading stars."

  And that made Ruby even more sure that the hands were those of Remo and the Oriental was Chiun, who was all right if you stayed on his right side. Remo was all right, too, but he was "real country" as Ruby liked to say. And he was funny, although he thought he was the most serious dude in the world. As for sanity, she would have bet on Chiun. She could understand why Chiun did things; there was no explaining what Remo did. Like making commercials.

  She flew up to New York to meet Remo's agent.

  The agent was so pretty he made Shirley Temple look like a concrete septic tank. He was so neat his lips looked as if moisture on them would be a mess. It was the first time Ruby ever wanted to be a man. If she were a man, this beautiful young man might be interested in her.

  "I want those hands," said Ruby.

  "Gawd, who doesn't, dear?" the agent said and Ruby wondered how he kept his hair that right.

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  Her $9.95 rayon wig didn't come out of the machine that neat. As a matter of fact, nothing was that neat.

  "Yeah, but I want to do a commercial on some of my stuff," said Ruby. "I want those hands in the commercial. So call them."

  "Well, actually, we don't call them. They call us."

  "Tell me where they are. I'll call them," Ruby said.

  And because it was all so boring, trying to track down properties who had just hands when there were so many big things going on out there, the agent gave Ruby the address.

  The two were in a luxury hotel overlooking Central Park. They had a suite. They were registered as "Jones and the gracious one."

  When Ruby stood outside their door, she suddenly became weak for a moment. She remembered the Island of Baqia and the miracles Remo and Chiun did and she remembered how often she had thought of them since that time.

  But Ruby Gonzalez was Ruby Gonzalez and when she knocked and heard Remo's voice ask who it was, she answered, "None of your business, dodo. Open this door."

  When the door opened, all she could say was, "Hello." And her voice was weak.

  "Hello," said Remo. "Where you been?"

  "Around," she said.

  "Yeah," said Remo. "I've been there, too. What brings you here?"

  And Ruby Gonzalez took a deep breath and concentrated and began talking a mile a minute, "Because you two owe me. I save your life and

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  you make me promises and then you just go and get lost and you never deliver on your promises and I shoulda known you never would, not you two, and now I'm here to collect."

  "Same Ruby," sighed Remo. "Screeching at me. For a minute there, I thought it was going to be different."

  But Chiun had seen the look on Ruby's face. He knew it was different, that different emotions had entered Ruby's heart, and while he said, "Come inside, close the door, and get the rice boiling," he was thinking that maybe he had found the way to get a new trainee for the House of Sinanju. One that nobody else would have a chance to mess up.

  "Hello," said Ruby, stepping inside the door.

  "Animal," said Chiun. "Animal. Rutting animals. Blacks, whites. Sexually active, mentally dormant. I see the looks in your faces, the both of you. I suppose you two want to make love now."

  There was no answer.

  "I suppose I should be grateful you two don't fall on the rug and couple there," said Chiun. But when they didn't, Chiun decided he had had it with the subtle approach.

  "A thousand gold pieces for a male child from the loins of my son," he called out.

  "Five thousand," said Ruby.

  "Three thousand," said Chiun.

  "Wait," said Remo. "Don't I have anything to say about this?"

  "No," said Chiun. "Who listens to a television star?"

  "No," said Ruby. "You got nothing to say."

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucius Jackson Gonzalez was too busy to wipe the sweat off his brow. He had been on this assembly line since daybreak and was still one hundred units short of his goal. His body twitched with terror.

  "Speed up the line," he begged.

  From above him on a metal ramp, he heard the overseer's metal-tipped boots clack toward him.

  "Quiet," came the gruff voice. Lucius Jackson Gonzalez did not know the face. He did not often look up to see it.

  "Yes sir," he said and just prayed that they would speed up the assembly line so he could get Ms one hundred additional units.

  It had only been a week since he had been ripped out of his bed at the strange hour of nine A.M., but that seemed like only a vague memory of a time so sweet and lazy he could hardly remember it. Now, all he remembered was the round metal bands he was supposed to wrap securely around the wooden posts that passed him on the assembly line. Late in the day, the work became more difficult as the wooden posts wore down and you had to take more care with the bands.

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  In the morning the metal just slipped in and it was secure and nobody was going to say anything. But down the assembly line, where six men used tools to take the bands off, the slots in the wood would wear down. And the bands themselves had to be handled gingerly because if you just snapped them on late in the day, they might break. Metal became tired. And all these problems mounted as the day wore on.

  Lucius's right hand suddenly spouted a red leak. He tried to hold back the blood so it wouldn't get on the bands. He had seen them go down the production line with blood on them before and the overseer always found out who did it. Lucius did not want to be found out so, wounded, he worked and prayed.

  It was not a slow transformation that had brought him to this eager sweating service. He had been sleeping. And what he remembered was hands grabbing him and he thought it might have been the police, except they would have been afraid to touch him. Police had to read you your rights. Police had to refrain from undue violence. You pretty much had to cut up a policeman before he would put his hands on you.

  So wh
en Lucius felt the hands, he knew immediately it wasn't the police. And he tried to reach for his razor, because when you were dealing with a brother, you had better cut first. But he couldn't get to his razor. And then he saw the men were white.

  He was working on his lawsuit charging a violation of his civil rights when he felt something very sharp prick his arm and then everything became heavy in his head and very dark.

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  He thought he was still falling when he realized he couldn't move his hands or legs and there was a plastic thing on his tongue. He thought he was blinded at first because there was only darkness around him. Then he saw a flat plane of very white light coming in down at his feet. And he saw other bodies in the shaft of light. His mouth was dry and he could not close it to swallow. The thirst became a biting pain and then numb. He could not feel the right arm his head rested on. His left was growing numb. He knew they were traveling because he could hear the motor and feel the bumping of the road beneath him.

  Then, the engine stopped and suddenly there was blinding light at his feet and he felt himself yanked out into the light that was too bright to see. Rough hands pulled back his eyelids. His eyes burned.

  "This one's all right," said someone. The plastic that wrapped his tongue and kept his mouth open was yanked out. Blessed cool water came in and Lucius lapped it up eagerly. He gulped and swallowed until his belly was full. The bindings on his wrists and ankles came off. And numbing pain came to his right arm on which he had rested.

  He was too frightened to talk. As he looked around he saw friends he knew, their eyes wide, laying on the ground or kneeling. Piles of white nylon ropes lay in pieces before him. When he could use his eyes, he saw there were two big buses behind him and their luggage compartments were open wide.

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  He shook his head trying to get the grogginess out of it.

  He was standing on a grass lawn. In front of him was a mansion. Behind him, the ocean stretched to the horizon. A small yacht was tied up at a dock at the water's edge.

  White men with whips and guns stood several paces away. They wore white suits with white straw hats.

  They said nothing.

  Lucius saw a friend of his, Big Red, who did pimping whenever he found a girl he could terrorize. Big Bed was a bad dude. Even police didn't want to mess with Big Red. Lucius felt better because Big Red was there. Big Red was a Lasufi Muslim and had changed his name to Ibrahim Al Shabazz Malik Muhammid Bin. Lucius Jackson Gonzalez had been planning to change his name, too, but it was too much work, having to go to court and all, so he settled for just unofficially dropping the Gonzalez and being known as Lucius Jackson.

  He tried to smile at Big Red. He was happy that he was there. Nobody messed with a Lasufi Muslim. These white tormenters would soon be put in their place.

  One of the black men shouted "We gonna have yo' ass for this."

  Wordlessly, a tall thin man with a thin smile and red hair, the sort of person you might lean on for a few dollars in a deserted street, came out of a car. He had a sword. He cut off the head of the man who shouted. Lucius watched the head roll. He also saw Ibrahim Al Shabazz Malik Muhammid Bin suddenly lower himself to his

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  knees, then bend forward till his forehead touched the ground. His flat hands were by his ears. A low wailing moan came up from Big Red's mouth. It was a spiritual. Man, did he love Jesus now.

  In an instant, the avenging Islamic terror of Norfolk, Virginia, was born again as a Christian.

  There was never an argument after that and it seemed Lucius Jackson had been working on the assembly line forever, along with the other twelve survivors. Seven putting on metal bands; six taking them back off. Lucius didn't question the need for such work. He would do whatever he was told. When they heated his twice daily gruel, he was most thankful for the gift. One day, somebody put a piece of pork in the gruel and Lucius, who'd only eaten well-marbled meats before and shouted at Ruby if she bought him T-bone instead of porterhouse, almost cried with joy. On the day they got real bread and real beans, Lucius almost kissed the hand that fed him.

  The diet of Lucius Jackson was no accident. It had been carefully planned as the minimum to sustain strength and to create a sense of, first, dependency and, then, gratitude in the recipient.

  Eight men, representing some of the most powerful corporations in the world, received this information in a bound booklet they had yet to open. They had been called to West Palm Beach, Florida, by Baisley DePauw, national executive chairman of the National Urban Movement, a group dedicated to alleviating poverty, urban regression, and racism. The DePauws had been involved in liberal American causes ever since they

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  stopped union busting with machinegun-toting goons.

  American school children never learned how the family that ordered machine guns to open fire on unarmed strikers at one of their oil refineries could have become so dedicated to the welfare of the citizens in so many public causes. When one thought of the DePauws, one thought of commissions fighting racism. When one thought of the DePauws, one thought of an angry warning to South Africa on its apartheid policies. When one thought of the DePauws, one thought of the angry young playwrights they sponsored who produced such plays as "Good Honkey, Dead Honkey."

  The DePauws also sponsored conferences where business leaders heard militant blacks ask for money for guns so they could shoot the business leaders. This suggestion was called an "in-depth rage."

  This conference in West Palm Beach, however, was not another progressive venting of the spleen. Baisley DePauw had promised that and had personally phoned each of the eight men. And each conversation went like this:

  "This is business, real business. Don't send me some vice president you keep around to attend the meetings you don't think are important. Let me tell you how important this meeting is."

  "Please do."

  "Anyone who is not at this meeting will not be able to compete in the marketplace within two years."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "C'mon, Baise, that's hard to believe."

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  "Do you remember that little project I told you about a few years ago ?"

  "The big-secret?"

  "Yes. Well, it worked. What if I told you I could man one of your production lines with workers at a cost of less than forty cents a day? Not an hour, a day. And what if I told you you would never have to worry about strikes again ? What if I told you you would never have to worry about working conditions or pensions? What if I told you your workers would worry only about getting old and useless?"

  "Baise, I'd say you're full of shit."

  "Either you come to that meeting or don't send anyone."

  "Dammit, I've got a personal meeting with the President of the United States that day."

  "Two years, out of business. Take your choice."

  "Baise, move the thing back a day."

  "No. I'm right on schedule."

  Baisley DePauw invited eight men and eight men showed up. The base kernel of western industry sat around a long table in the DePauw mansion in West Palm Beach. There would be no drinks because it required a servant to bring drinks. They would not be allowed to have their secretaries present because eight was the limit who could know this thing. Anyone who didn't have to know it couldn't.

  "Baisley, old boy, this is rather much of a precaution."

  "It is a daring idea," said Baisley DePauw.

  And Baisley DePauw, the very model of concerned patrician elegance, from the touch of gray at his temples to the rolling Hudson River

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  accent, bade his guests to open their bound booklets. Most of them didn't understand what they read. They complained that they had people who understood these sorts of things. They weren't labor relations experts. They made decisions on how most of the civilized world lived. They couldn't be bothered with labor costs. If Baisley wanted to play with trivia, why didn't he have this at a lower level ?

&nbs
p; "Your labor costs and labor attitude is why Japan gains on us every day. Your labor costs determine how you do business now and in the future. It's getting worse. You're paying more for less."

  "And you're no different, Baise. C'mon," said the chairman of a conglomerate that had just given a contract whereby men would retire with more than they used to make ten years earlier. When someone mentioned labor costs to him, all he could think of was high. He also got very sick when someone mentioned these things. And not being in front of labor people, he could afford to spit when DePauw mentioned labor costs. So he did. On the rug.

  "We also have problems with the inner cities," said DePauw. "You know the costs of the urban poor. How they act on an environment. I'm talking about the native American black, the original American slave. If you compress what they do to an area, like say the South Bronx in New York City, it's like a bombing raid during World War Two. Except more expensive."

  Now when DePauw began mentioning inner city and blacks, the executives became restless. If they were not all that interested in labor statis-

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  tics, they cared even less for social causes, although every one of them had appeared in pictures receiving plaques for their work in civil rights. They had all joined fashionable organizations contributing millions to black causes. They had condemned racism. They had even joined appeals to end racism and testified in Congress against racism. Thus was American industry against racism, because as one of them put it, "The cost is negligible and we really don't have anything to do with those people." Another called it "cheap virtue."

  Baisley DePauw picked up a picture of a black man.

  "Dammit," one industrialist yelled. "If you want to discuss social programs, do it somewhere else. You're wasting our time with this crap."

  "I am showing you a resource," said DePauw. He had dealt with these men and taken their measure, and their anger was just where he wanted it.

  He showed a photograph of Lucius Jackson. "Resource," he said.

  Someone guffawed. "That is about as much a resource as cancer," said a computer executive.

  Baisley DePauw allowed a thin knowing smile to cross his face.

  "This man, part-time pimp, part-time mugger, on and off welfare I don't know how many times, father of countless children he doesn't support, is now a fine worker who costs the manufacturer forty cents a day and, if he does reproduce, will give us another fine worker just like himself. Better workers than you have. And no union leaders to fight with."