The air tasted of the soot and filth of millions of people living close, burning things to heat themselves, discarding garbage, and rushing. You could feel people rush. And Remo didn't care Whether the Constitution worked or Smith's operation worked or about anything to do with why he had accepted that offer to join so many years before. Then why was he doing it? Why did he continue?
On this hot night, the buildings seemed to sweat black faces from open windows. A white man walking through this neighborhood alone attracted chuckles. A few glistening fat women called out that whitey ought to start running and that if he didn't run now he would be running mighty soon, heh, heh.
Why did he continue: Why? And the only answer was as true as it was confusing. He did it because it was what he did.
Government came and went, civilizations rose and then left their buried droppings for later civilizations to try to figure out, but Sinanju, this better use of the human mind and body, continued. That was eternal because it was rooted in the best of what man could be. New governments only promised the best, like some hope that always ended with a new dictator replacing the one before him. What Smith was fighting was not chaos or disorder or elements that prevented good, honest government. He was fighting human nature. And Remo, serving him, was using that same human nature to the fullest. Was he becoming too much like Chiun? Would he end up thinking of himself as the world's only human being, with a bunch of lessers running around polluting the landscape?
"Good evening, honkey," said a thin black face atop a muscular body. Several people lounging on stoops chuckled.
"Speedy's got the honkey," laughed a woman. "Come see Speedy. He gone do the job on the honkey. Run, honkey. Honkey ain't runnin'."
Perhaps Chiun was right. Yet sometimes Remo felt that Chiun's personality ran alongside the wisdom of Sinanju. Chiun was Chiun and Sinanju was Sinanju, and while Sinanju was most of him, it was not all of him. Chiun might have been a Tcvetch in any age.
"You run?" said the thin black face.
And yet who was Remo? How much of him was Sinanju?
"You need a stickin', honkey."
A small glistening knife caught the glint of an overhead street light. It was coming toward Remo. He took the hand on the knife and put it into the right eye of the thin black face. And left it there, neat, in the brain.
Was Remo running alongside Sinanju also? Was he a visitor in his own body?
A lumbering hulk, with a large two-by-four swinging around him like a baseball bat looking to connect with Remo's head, plodded into Remo's path. Now here was a perfect example. Remo saw the man slower than he was actually moving. He saw the two-by-four moving so slowly he could have carved his initials on it.
Sinanju controlled his eyesight. He didn't. He breathed this way, he saw that way, he heard this way. Who was He anymore?
Remo split the big board precisely and let the mocha-colored man go whoomphing into a stoop.
He couldn't even slap a kid who was going to kill him. Now if it were up to him, he would have slapped. And he wanted to. But his body wouldn't do It. Sinanju wouldn't let his body.
A pistol cocked across the street. Now here was another good case. He heard this small sound clearly. It was distinguished from the car engines and the shouts and the footsteps and the windows opening down the block. It was clear and his mind picked it up, separated it, and labeled it "menace" without his even trying. Even without his consent.
The sound came from behind a stoop fifteen yards up to the right. Two bodies, heavy, probably male, came puffing up behind him. Remo lowered slightly, moving back and taking his two arms as scythes upended two men in blue jean jackets with the words "Spade Stones" sewn across the shoulders.
"He bruised a Stone," yelled someone.
The pistol, like a silver jewel in a fat black hand, appeared from behind the stoop. Remo pushed it backward into a mouth that finally opened to the pressure on it.
And another good case. This man couldn't control the reflex action of his trigger finger. It closed. The bullet came out his right ear with waxy sediment, tiny hairs and a spray of brain. Now this man's reflexes were reflexes. Remo's were a tradition. He didn't even have control of his reflexes. They were Sinanju.
It was a question of soul. His body and his mind belonged to Sinanju. His soul belonged to him, and just as Chiun would have been a carper in any age, Remo would be a questioner, and the question would always be: Why am I doing this? And the answer would always be: Because this is what I do.
In terror, a Spade Stone trying to flee Remo got himself trapped between Remo and a corner of the stoop.
"Leave me alone," said Remo. "I've got problems to work out."
The man was agreeable. He fell over himself agreeing. He made a whoooping dash across the sidewalk, over a fire hydrant, and skittered around a white Eldorado pimpmobile, where he hid.
It occurred to Remo on his thoughtful walk down the block that if people could just express themselves, this whole racial problem in America could be solved. All he had said was he had problems and would the man leave him alone. And the man had. One human being responding to another. It was good to get mutual concern back in America.
When he reached the motel, Chiun's daytime TV soaps were ending, and Remo waited quietly as Warner Hemper explained to Dr. Theresa Lawson Cook, for the sixth time in the day's episode, that an ecological abortion could not save Mrs. Cortina Woolets in her religious revival backed by the Mafia, even though the father of the unborn child was a Vietnamese refugee.
"Trash," said Chiun, when the commercial ended.
"Trash," he said again and set the taping machine atop the television to begin its recording of the other two network channels the next day.
"Then why don't you stop watching them?" Remo asked.
Chiun looked loftily at Remo.
"How dare you begrudge an old and gentle creature his brief moments of joy? You are troubled."
"Yeah. I've been thinking. Something strange happened today."
"With a child," said Chiun.
"You know," Remo said.
"I knew."
"Why did it happen like that? I was powerless, and this kid was going to kill me."
"Not powerless," said Chiun. "Are you not alive?"
"Well, I am alive, yes."
"That is the most necessary power. The ability to bring harm to others is secondary."
"What if I had been in a position where my only out was hitting the kid was who holding the gun on me?"
Chiun nodded and thought a moment. His longer fingernails slid together like the joining of delicately polished curved ivory needles.
"But that did not happen, did it?"
"No, it didn't," said Remo. He looked at a watch on the wall. It was a minute and a half late. In seventeen minutes, the line to Smith would be open.
"There are many explanations for what happened to you, all of them true," said Chiun. "As you know, Sinanju is a poor village."
"I know, I know, I know, I know. You had to rent out your services to the emperors of the world so the children of Sinanju wouldn't starve. I know."
"And the babies during time of famine had to be put into the cold waters of the bay. Therefore any failure of a mission is really killing the children we serve. This has been so, lo, these many years, lo, these many generations, lo, even unto centuries."