“The point is, I was just passing the time.”
“What of the new People?”
“That was a hundred percent the bird’s doing. I found him flapping around the tree about midmorning with the kid. The bird told me he had more People on their way. Of course, you can’t put faith in what the bird says, so I climbed up the tree and watched him until I spotted more People. He was leading them to the tree where the boy was. I figured I might as well fix up the village, feed the kid, get the supplies.”
“Restore the village for the new People,” Chiun concluded.
“So call me Suzy Homemaker. But don’t call me Qetzeel the Destroyer.”
“I did not call you Qetzeel.”
“You believed the old man.”
“The Caretaker’s faith served him well, Suzy. Why should I not believe what he believes? He has seen the legend of his creation reenacted before his eyes. The People are made anew. They were gathered together around the only survivor, the Caretaker, and this is precisely how the People came into being in their previous incarnation. And in the incarnation before that.”
Remo saw green under the helicopter. It went off in every direction. The jungle was huge. But when they were on the ground, in the midst of the dead zone, it had felt like the entire world was dead.
“What do you mean, the time before that?” he asked suddenly. “You mean this happens over and over?”
Chiun was still staring out the window. “That is the legend of the People.”
“And the Caretaker is always the one who survives to reform the new People?”
Chiun nodded. “So the legend says. I know not if it is true. I do not know what catastrophe comes to slay the people—if it is not always Sa Mangsang.”
Remo became angry again. “So why didn’t you tell the Caretaker to move the damn People somewhere else? Obviously, that patch of real estate ain’t safe. Maybe if they moved away from the cave with the speaking tube, they wouldn’t get wiped out over and over.”
Chiun considered that. “The Caretaker’s role is not to care for the People, Remo. Even the man himself does not realize the scope of his destiny. He is the Caretaker of Sa Mangsang. He lives to do what this man did—speak to Sa Mangsang—or to train a protégé to carry on for him. The People’s purpose is to sustain the lineage of Caretakers.”
Remo chewed on that and he didn’t like the taste of it. “So, we just set those People up to die?”
“Not this generation, or the next, but some generation in the future.”
“That stinks. They’re pawns. They ought to be told what they’re being used for.”
“Used by whom?”
“I don’t know,” Remo said. “Somebody.”
“And if there were no People?” Chiun asked. “There would be no Caretaker. If there was no Caretaker, there would have been no voice to lull Sa Mangsang into slumber. Where would the world be, Remo, if not for this band of orphans adopted into this special purpose?”
Remo twisted his fists and clenched his lips. “Dammit! I hate all this crap. What’s it supposed to mean? I’m just like one of the People, Chiun?”
“I did not say this,” Chiun replied.
“I’m an orphan. I’m destined to serve some great purpose and fulfill some old-time prophecy. I’m just like the People, huh? Dammit all to hell, what’s it take for a guy to get a little bit of control over his own life?”
Chiun frowned. “Few men control their own destiny.”
“But most people have real-world problems. They don’t go running around having their sailboat blown off course by Zeus in heaven. Or whatever high-and-mighty deity of the day is meddling in my affairs.”
Chiun pointed out, “But look at the greatness such destiny has bestowed upon you, Remo. You have achieved what no other white man before you ever achieved—you are blessed with the mastery of the art of Sinanju. It is a rare and precious gift.”
“Yeah.”
“You doubt this?” Chiun demanded.
“I’m just wondering what life would have been like if I hadn’t been the answer to everybody’s myths and expectations.” Remo saw the glimmer of an outpost of civilization in the distance. “What if I’d had a regular life?”
“Fah!” Chiun dismissed it with a wave. “You would be dead. Or obese and filthy.”
“But I’d be master of my own destiny.”
“You would be master of a hovel on a rank street in the city of New Jersey. You would doubtless be cuckolded by your strident wife and disdained by your belligerent children. You would spend your days directing traffic on street corners and your weekends watching sports programs on the television.”
“Sounds okay.”
“It sounds repulsive. You would probably shoot yourself in the head with a clumsy firearm out of sheer boredom.”
“Maybe.”
“You would never have found your sire. You would never have known you were linked by blood to the Sun On Jo people. Thus, you would never have known that you are blessed with the greatness of the glorious lineage of Sinanju. Blood much polluted by other strains of humanity, yes, but still tinged with a measure of excellence.”
Remo felt the world cloud his thoughts. “Fate did have it in for me.”
Chiun looked out the window, watching the ugly Brazilian outpost loom large underneath them.
Chapter 6
“Tulient is using banks, credit cards, international credit lines, all for the purpose of converting any and all Canadian currency in the province to U.S. dollars. The Canadian government is taking measures to keep the value of the Canadian dollar stable.” The old man sat back in his creaking chair, but didn’t take his eyes off the vivid computer display under the glass top of his desk. “He’s creating a scarcity of Canadian dollars inside Newfoundland and Labrador.”
The younger man in a nearby desk was looking at his own screen, which was elevated from the onyx surface. “What’s his purpose? He’s taking huge losses in the process.” The man looked up. “I suppose he isn’t the one losing the money on the exchange.”
“The provincial government, the people of Newfoundland, they’re taking financial losses,” agreed the old man sourly. “However, I believe it is the Canadian government that will lose in the end. It won’t risk allowing its dollar to become destabilized, so there is no real incentive for him to not make the exchange. And in the end, the province ends up with a currency that the federal government of Canada cannot control.”
The young man nodded. He understood the concept, but he still wasn’t sure about the why of it all. He should have been able to wrap his mind around it. His expertise was in understanding the motives of criminals, terrorists, politicians and bureaucratic systems. It was what he was trained for—and what he was born to do.
Mark Howard had been regarded as a brilliant, if quirky, investigator for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. A few years ago he received an order, from the President of the United States, no less, to move into a new position. Now he was the assistant to the director of Folcroft Sanitarium, a private convalescent hospital in Rye, New York. He was also assistant to the director of a highly classified government agency known as CURE.
The director of Folcroft, and CURE, was the old, sour man at the next desk.
Harold W. Smith had also been recruited from the CIA to CURE by a U.S. President, but it had been long before Mark Howard. It was decades ago, when a young and idealistic President had come to the shocking revelation that the U.S. was doomed. The Constitution of the United States, which promised freedom and due process to every crook and killer, tied the hands of those who would enforce the laws of the land. For every murderer who got jail time, another killer was set free by the machinations of a clever attorney. For every rapist who served hard time there was another who spent a few token years behind bars and then walked out into the streets again, free to resume his predatory ways.