None of the moves were particularly exotic, mere shoves. The difference was that for a trained person time moved more slowly. He was past the last patrolman and out when he felt a sting in the small of his back. He knew it could not be one of the officer's guns because there was not enough impact. He turned. None of them were pointing at him. Ms. Kaufperson had gone into a flailing of the arms. Yet some one apparently had gotten off a shot at him. He was glad the little boy had not been hit. Remo moved away from the office. The body had just accepted the intrusion of the object. He would be feeling the pain soon.
Walking toward the front door, his back began to feel as if someone had stuffed a hot stove coil into it. He slowed the breathing process, and with it, the circulation. This meant that by the time he reached the taxi he was really moving slowly because the slowed blood stream slowed the legs.
"I've been wounded," he said, falling into the back seat and now, by hand, closing off the circulation to the area.
"Idiot," said Chiun, slapping Remo's hand away from the wound and inserting his own. He motioned the driver to go forward quickly. While ordinarily the driver would have told anyone fleeing that he wouldn't be part of it, he had already been educated not to argue with the Master of Sinanju.
"Idiot," said Chiun. "How could you get yourself wounded to me? How could you do this thing?"
"I don't know. I was making a simple move and I felt this pain in my back."
"Simple move. Pain in the back. Were you sleeping? What were you doing?"
"I told you, a simple move. It's only a tissue wound."
"Well, at least I suppose I am to be grateful for that," said Chiun, adding in Korean that it showed incredible ingratitude for Remo to risk the destruction of all that Chiun had made of him. It was a desecration of the values of Sinanju that Remo should risk his life.
"I'll remember that, Little Father," said Remo, though he was smiling.
"It is not just another white life you are risking anymore. I hoped I had trained you out of the courage silliness of the West that leads men to ignore that most useful sense of fear."
"All right, all right. Stop carping. I don't know where I got hit from."
"Ignorance is even worse than courage."
"I don't know what happened." And in Korean because the cab driver might be listening, Remo went through, in detail, everything he did in Warner Pell's office and everything everyone else did.
"And what did the child do?" asked Remo.
"The little boy? Nothing, I think," said Remo.
"When you arranged the policemen's guns, you thought of guns. So those guns did not injure you."
"Well, one must have."
"Which?"
"I don't know."
"Then it was none of the policemen's guns. This is so. For many is the man who watches the sword that is killed by the rock and many who watch the rock and the sword who are killed by the club. But he who uses his full senses is not killed by the thing he watches."
"I am Sinanju. I use my full sense."
"There is an organ in the body called the grinder."
"You mean the appendix."
"We call it the grinder. Once a long time ago this organ ground coarse foods. But it no longer was needed when man began to eat simple grains. And it stopped working. Now if a man were to eat a fish with all its scales, his body would be hurt by the coarseness of it because the grinder does not work, although he still has it in his body."
"What are you saying? I need your little stories now like I need an abcess."
"You always need my little stories so you will understand."
"What does my appendix have to do with this whole thing?"
"That which is clear is clear. That which is not clear is more clear."
"Of course," said Remo. "Fish scales. It's fish scales that did it. For a minute, I thought it was a bullet in my back. I hope the worm and the hook aren't still in me."
"Ridicule is merely another way of saying something is above you."
"Beyond me."
"One should not explain the mysteries of the universe to a toad."
"Croak. Try again. Perhaps if we weren't talking Korean, you might ease up on the riddles." The pain was leaving Remo's back as Chiun's hand worked gently on the nerves surrounding the hole in his flesh.
"Riddles? To an imbecile in the dark a candle is the greatest riddle of all, for where does the dark go? This has nothing to do with the candle and all to do with the imbecile." And at this Chiun was quiet.
But Remo persisted and finally Chiun asked:
"What sense that you do not need has been turned off?"
"None."
"Wrong. It is so turned off you are not aware of it."
"Sense? Sense?"
"When you looked at the guns, what sort of things did you not look at? Things that were of no danger to you, correct? And what was of no danger to you? Do you not know what was of no danger to you? Can you think of what was of no danger to you?"
Remo shrugged.
"Was the desk of no danger to you?"
"Right. The desk."
"Was the wall of no danger to you?"
"You know I watch walls. Like you, I'm aware of walls when I enter a room."
"Correct. But not a desk. Now we both know many walls are hidden traps. But not desks, so you did not watch the desk. Who were the people in the room?"
"The two patrolmen, the two detectives, Ms. Kaufperson, and the corpse. You don't mean the corpse did it?"
Chiun sighed. "We are so lucky, so infinitely lucky that you are alive. You should be dead now."
"Who? C'mon, tell me."
"I have been telling you and what I tell you most now is that your ignorance shows how dangerous these assassins are. They are not seen. You see them but you do not see them."
"Who, dammit, who?"
"The child," said Chiun. "Think of all who have died. Were there not children at the Army post, right in the house where Kaufmann died? Yes, there were. And where was that other victim killed but in a schoolyard with children? And if this is not clear enough for even your dull eyes, how were all these people killed? By bombs which a child could throw or leave. Or with bullets of a small-caliber gun. And what angles did the bullets make into the body? Under the chin and upward, the direction a child uses. A child who could conceal a small gun but not a large one, a child whom bodyguards would only attempt to shoo away, never to protect themselves from. A child who is never noticed as a person, not even by you who was injured by one."
"Wow," said Remo.
And Chiun watched the streets of Chicago go by.
"Wow," said Remo again.
"You guys talk funny," said the cab driver. "Is it Chinese?"
"No," said Chiun. "It is language."
"What language?"
"Language," said Chiun.
"Japanese?"
"No. Japanese is Japanese. Language is language."
The conclusion was inescapable. All white men were dense, as dense as Chinese or Africans. Or the Koreans to the south and even those in Pyong Yang in the north. Stupid. Only Sinanju was a fitting receptacle for the light of wisdom, except of course the fishermen by the docks and the woodworkers and the villagers who lived off the toil of the Masters of Sinanju.
By a process of elimination, Chiun had reduced the world to the Master of Sinanju, who was worthy, and all others, who were not.
And not even all the Masters had been perfect. There was he during the reign of the Tangs who had grown corpulent and lazy, preferring to let others do his work. And one could not always believe the tales about ancestors because sometimes uncles and aunts did not portray with the greatest accuracy the accomplishments of relatives.