"Vice. Disgusting. Degeneracy," said Chiun as yesterday's commercials came on.
"Then why don't you stop watching them, Little Father?"
"Because I trusted you a long time ago when you promised to keep such filth out of my daytime dramas and I continue to wait, without real hope, for you to live up to your promise."
"Hold on. I never…" But Remo stopped. He had exactly forty-four seconds to speak to Chiun, and he preferred to discuss the collapse of the organization, Smith's trap, whether Remo and Chiun had any chance, and what they should do about it.
"Why are we in Burwell, Nebraska?" Remo asked.
"We are attacking that thing."
"How are we attacking in Burwell, Nebraska. Is he here?"
"Of course not. That is why we are here."
"Don't you think we should go where he is?"
"Where is he?" asked Chiun.
"I don't know."
"Then how can we go there?" asked Chiun.
Varna Haltington returned to the screen, asking two things from Dr. Andrews. His body and the emotional condition of his wife, Alice, and would she have an abortion? They discussed Alice's abortion sympathetically until Varna put her hands on Dr. Andrews' shoulders signifying sex and the end of the episode.
"So how are we attacking?" Remo asked.
"Were you not at the hospital? Did you not hear?"
"Yeah, I heard. We called him dirty names and he called us dirty names."
"You are given maps and you see nothing," said Chiun. "It is he who fears time, not us. He must attack."
"That gives him the initiative."
"No, it does not," Chiun said.
"Why not?"
"Because he does not know where we are."
"So?" asked Remo.
"So he must find us."
"I don't think he can definitely do that."
"Exactly. So he must do things to attract us. And that will let us know where he is."
"And then we walk into another one of his traps," said Remo and waited through another soap opera. This time Katherine made a lewd suggestion to Dr. Drake Marlen, whom she knew to be married to Nancy Whitcomb, who had not been raped but was thinking about an abortion anyway, because she was in love with her psychiatrist.
"Why," said Remo when the commercial came on, "should he fear time and not us? I mean, metal and transistors outlast flesh."
"If you had been listening in the hospital, you would have heard me put the thought into his mind which he accepted because it was true."
"I didn't hear any thought," said Remo.
"Man outlasts everything he makes."
"That's not true. Just look at tombstones," said Remo.
"Look at them," Chiun said. "Show me the tombstones of the Scythians, the ancient markers of the Celtic tribes. All are gone, and yet the Persians survive and the Irish live fresh as a newborn baby's smile."
"The pyramids."
"Look at them in decay. And look at the Egyptians. Look too at the fragment of a great temple, the wailing wall of the Jews. And look at the new Israelis. No, man renews himself, and his things do not. The thing understood. He knew that the House of Sinanju passed on from one master to another master and would be here strong and new and alive when his tinkerings had begun to rust. It is he who must destroy us now, not we who must destroy him."
"Why didn't he take me in the hospital? When he was disguised as a nurse and could have had the jump on me?"
"He probably thought you were conscious. Which proves that even gadgets can make mistakes. Also he may fear what one of us will do if the other is killed. He seems to want to dispatch us both at once. Hence the bomb in Smith's room."
"That's another problem. Smitty."
"There are other emperors in the world."
"I happen to have loyalty to this one."
"The House of Sinanju is famous for its loyalty. Loyalty is one thing, but stupidity another. We are unique. Emperors are many. We owe many loyalties and the first is to Sinanju, although this you have not yet understood, and you should, of all people, because someday you will be the Master of Sinanju."
"We've got to do something for Smitty," Remo insisted.
"If we had gone to Persia, Smith would be uninjured. For any emperor, the best thing one can do is serve him in his capacity and no more."
"I don't buy that. Even though he's not in his office playing with his computer, he's still the boss. Mine and yours."
"Yours perhaps," said Chiun. "Not mine. You may be an employee but I am an independent contractor." He raised a hand. "But we will save Smith."
"How?"
"You saw the nurse, the human nurse, who walked into his room without offsetting the bomb?"
"Setting off. Yes, I saw her."
"The bomb is for us. For you and me. We will protect Smith by staying away from him and not offsetting the bomb."
"Setting off," said Remo, but Chiun was not listening. He had turned back to the television set and Remo had to sit through the current day's "As the Planet Revolves" and "The Wrought and the Rampant" before he could get an answer to another nagging problem.
"What trap do you think Gordons will use against us?" Remo said.
"The trap we tell him to," said Chiun and would talk no more of the subject because to continue to pour water over a wet stone did not make it any wetter.
In the afternoon, Remo phoned Smith from a pay phone in a nearby roadhouse.
The jukebox was playing something that sounded like a teenager's whine set to drums. Several motorcyclists in black jackets, with hair that looked as if it had been combed with tree roots from a mangrove swamp, drank beer and threatened people. The bartender attempted to preserve his manhood by scrupulously not noticing. If he were aware, he would have to do something about it. He didn't want to try.
Remo got Smith and found out he was feeling better, "considering."
"They're taking the bandages off the left eye by the end of the week, and I've stabilized. They say I should be able to try to walk next week."
"Don't," said Remo.
"I know that," said Smith. "Do you have any good leads. You know I can't get anything going from a hospital bed with open lines. I'm even afraid to install secure lines. Who knows what will set the thing off?"
"Yeah," said Remo.
"Leads?" asked Smith again.
"Yeah. We're… uh, moving on a plan."
"Good," said Smith. "If it weren't for you, I'd probably have given up."
"Hang in there, Smitty," said Remo, feeling very small.
"Same to you, Remo."
Remo hung up and ordered a glass of spring water from the bartender. A motorcyclist with ape-hairy arms and an old German helmet painted with a swastika offered Remo something stronger.
"I don't drink," Remo said. "Drink, smoke, eat meat or entertain ambivalent or hostile thoughts."
"What do you do, faggo?" said the cyclist, laughing. He turned to his friends, who laughed with him. They had a live one. The back of the jacket said in pink and white paint: "Rat Skulls."
"I'm a hand surgeon," said Remo.
"Yeah? What's a hand surgeon?"
"I improve faces with my hand."
"Yeah? Improve mine, faggo, heh, heh."
"Oh, thank you for the invitation," said Remo, leaving the bar to stand close to the table with the rest of the Rat Skulls.
"Now, gentlemen, I will show you how I can catch a nose in my hands," said Remo.
"That's a shitty kid's trick," said one of the Rat Skulls. "You pass your hand over a kid's face and stick your thumb between your fingers and say, hey, look kid, I got your nose."