The air was worse there. Not merely harder to breathe, but more yellow. Frighteningly yellow. And Aldace saw why.
The Sabrejet, which had been placed there in 1965 after the town fathers had exhausted every effort to have a steam engine-a more fitting symbol of La Plomo's former glory-placed in the square, was expelling something from its tailpipe. It came out in furious yellowish streams.
The truth dawned on Aldace Noiles then. His mind had refused to accept it. Until now.
"My God, it's gas!" Aldace croaked. "Poison gas!"
And all over town, the hack-cough symphony swelled to a crescendo.
Aldace Noiles knew then there would be no escape, and so he stumbled back toward home and the comfort of his lonely bed. He didn't make it. Aldace collapsed on the burning green grass, coughing up crimson clots, his body racked with the shakes.
Aldace Noiles was not going to die in bed after all-not in the peaceful manner he had been counting on.
But at the last, Aldace was a simple God-fearing man. He would accept what the Good Lord had in store for him without complaint. If only it didn't hurt so deep.
As he died, he coughed out a little prayer. Not for himself, but for the good people of La Plomo. Especially the young ones, who hadn't had much of a future when the day began, but now had absolutely none at all.
Their pitiful cries scorched his ears.
His last act was to stick his shaking fingers in his ears to block out the Godawful din. Even that did not help.
Later, the morticians had to break his stiff arms the better to fit him in his coffin. By that time, La Plomo was a silent necropolis in which no songbirds sang and the drone of insects was curiously absent.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he was being ignored.
The ignoring began in North Korea, in the village of Sinanju, to be exact. Sinanju was not much of a village as villages go. It was basically an apron of mud flats overlooking a barren gray sea, the West Korea Bay. Back of the mud flats the huts clustered, ramshackle, weathered, and unfit for human habitation.
It was nevertheless one of the best places to live out your days north of the thirty-eighth parallel. No men from Sinanju were ever drafted into the People's Army. No taxes were ever collected, not since the year 1945, when an emissary of the new communist government arrived to insist that the village must now pay its taxes, even though taxes had been waived in the long-ago days when Korea was ruled by the Dragon Throne.
The tax collector-whose name is not recorded in the annals of Sinanju-was handed his head. Literally.
He had stood there facing the Master of Sinanju, whom he assumed was something akin to a mayor or village chief, repeating his request to the Master, because the old man was apparently deaf. He kept saying, "What?" in a querulous voice.
"If you dispute the amount of the tax," the tax collector had explained, "you may file for an abatement."
"I do not know that word," said the Master of Sinanju, suddenly hearing very well. "It sounds Western." He spat.
"An abatement is the return of unfair tax."
"I declare all taxes on Sinanju unfair. You may go now."
"I must insist."
Finally the Master of Sinanju, who was called Chiun, made a vague gesture with his impossibly long fingernails. The tax collector remembered the gesture to his dying instant.
The tax collector heard the one called Chiun say, "Put out both hands."
Thinking that he had prevailed upon the old man, the tax collector obeyed. His neatly severed head fell into his upraised palms.
His ears echoed to the Master of Sinanju's bitter, "There is your abatement." But he heard the words not. He was dead.
"Thus did Kim II-Sung, first leader of communist North Korea, learn of the House of Sinanju's attitude toward his mastery of the land," Chiun said gravely, many years later, a wise finger lifted to the sky. "By being ignored."
Remo Williams heard this story sitting around the village square with the very same Master of Sinanju. Chiun's wizened old face broke into radiating wrinkles of joy as he finished his tale. He slapped one silken knee. The light in his eyes was as clear as agates polished by a meandering stream. His thin frame and wispy beard shook with humor. Even the puffs of hair over each ear seemed to vibrate with mirth.
Remo laughed. The villagers laughed, a little nervously, because they were outnumbered three to one by Mongol warriors, guests of the Master of Sinanju. The Mongols roared. Their laughter shook the very blue in the sky. Back from the shore, at the inner edge of the village, scores of Mongol ponies whinnied and dropped dung. The sound of dropping dung was like a noisome intermittent rain.
This had gone on all month, since they had journeyed on horseback from distant China, bearing the treasure of Genghis Khan.
"Pretty good story, Little Father," Remo Williams, the only white man in the gathering, said.
He was ignored.
The significance of this was lost on him until, hours later, with the sun sinking and the moon turning into a crystal bowl low in the cobalt sky, the Mongol leaders-Boldbator, who called himself Khan, and the bandit chief Kula-drew themselves up and offered farewell toasts to the dying blue of the sky.
The Master of Sinanju bade farewell to the Mongols with Oriental gravity. Ornate snuff bottles were exchanged. The bowing went on for nearly an hour.
Remo placed his hands on Kula's shoulders and Kula returned the gesture. He and Boldbator also exchanged the traditional Mongol gesture of farewell. Warm words were exchanged. They perfumed the air as the entire village trailed the Mongols to their houses.
"Farewell, brave brothers of the horse," Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, called after them. "Sinanju owes you a great debt."
"It is good to know that the ties which bound Lord Genghis to Sinanju survive in the modern world," thundered Boldbator.
"Have a good one, guys," Remo called. Everyone looked at Remo, unsure how to respond to the white man's empty words.
Remo grinned sheepishly.
Then the Mongols mounted and arrayed their ponies, Boldbator and Kula taking the lead. Kula raised the nine-horsetail standard of Genghis Khan high in a one-handed salute. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone together would have needed all four hands to hold it off the ground. But Kula lifted it with no especial effort.
"Farewell, comrades," they sang, starting off.
Remo and Chiun watched the undulating rumps of the ponies disappear into the gathering dusk, dropping their seemingly ceaseless supply of malodorous fertilizer.
When they were no longer visible, the villagers let out a collective sigh of relief. The men almost wept with the joy of having supped with Mongol raiders and survived. The women stopped walking with their thighs together, no longer in fear of being ravished.
"Well, that's the last of them," Remo said.
"I thought they would never leave," Chiun spat, turning to go.
Walking carefully so as not to step in anything organic, Remo followed, saying, "Am I missing something? Didn't you just swear undying admiration to those guys?"
Again he was ignored.
Shrugging, Remo fell in behind the purposeful figure of the Master of Sinanju, who strode up to the one sound edifice in the entire village, the House of the Masters, built of rare woods back in the days of the pharaohs.
Chiun undid the intricate locks and pushed the door open. He disappeared within. Remo started to follow. The door slammed in his face. Remo stopped, put his hands on his hips.
"What did I do!" he complained loudly. Silence greeted his demand. He pounded on the door. "Chiun? Open up. You hear me?"
No answering sound came from the House of the Masters. Remo put one ear to the polished wood.