"There is nothing to worry about," said Chiun. "We will show we understand anaerobic better than any scientist. We will show how long we can hold our breaths."
In Korean, he said to Remo, "While he is weakened, ask him if he knows any television producers." "Not now," said Remo. "It's the wrong time." "White men always have time for nonsense," Chiun said, "but never any time for beauty."
36
Chapter Three
"What's it to you?" said the thin man with thick wrists and an easy way of sitting on the laboratory table, so that he seemed not so much sitting on the table as holding it on the floor. The young professor and his Oriental associate had gotten a prime corner office at Massachusetts University of Technology, and Dr. Woldemar Keating wanted to know how someone could just arrive that morning at MUT and get a corner office. That had happened in the past only with people who taught black studies and History of White Racism and Intergroup Inequities in a Diseased Capitalist Society and all the other Mickey Mouse courses that colleges had offered through the seventies until the administrators had begun to realize that their fund-raising letters to alumni were going unanswered because their alumni could no longer read.
No. Nowadays to get a corner office right away, they had to be famous. Or know someone. Dr. Woldemar Keating wanted to know which. Not that he was jealous. He certainly wasn't that sort.
"Just curious," he said.
"We do special work in the rapid-breeding anaerobic bacteria stuff," said Remo.
"Oh. Petroleum boys. Well, we certainly won't be able to keep you very long," said Dr. Keating. "I suppose you got the office because of that."
"We got it because we're worth it. Have you ever 37
thought that the reason you might not have this sort of office is that you're not worth it?" asked Remo.
"That's a rather negative way of looking at things. I've never heard of you."
"Maybe that's why you don't have a corner office," said Remo.
Dr. Keating watched the Oriental raise a single finger to attract attention. The Oriental gestured for Dr. Keating to sit down, then brought forth a small mirror from the folds of his robes and put it to his lips. He motioned for Dr. Keating to look at his watch. Keating waited twenty minutes in silence. He saw no moisture on the mirror. That meant the man wasn't breathing. This was impossible for a person to do for a half-hour, and Keating was sure they had some sort of mechanical device to sneak oxygen into the bloodstream safely. He was waiting to see how they did it.
But after a half-hour, the Oriental only nodded and began breathing again.
"What was that?" asked Dr. Keating.
"Anaerobic," said Chiun. "We are the authorities on anaerobic."
"Really, you have some device that allows you to function without oxygen."
"Yes," said Chiun. "It is the balance between negativity and positivity, so that the body is unneeding of anything, a perfect single unity."
"Of course," Keating said. "Ions. The valences of ions. Yes." And Remo realized somehow that the breathing principle of Sinanju also held true for some sort of scientific principle.
"Well, you certainly are real. I must admit that, and I apologize for the fact that I suspected you were without academic credentials," said Dr. Keating.
"A credential," said Chiun, "is only someone else's suspicion of one's worth. I do not see anyone in this place worthy of understanding who and what I am."
"I must say you're honest," said Dr. Keating. "Everybody else here at MUT thinks that way, but no one
38
really gets around to saying it. By the way, you're in a prime field. And you're lucky."
"I heard a few scientists in this field were killed," said Remo. "That doesn't sound lucky to me."
"Those are only the ones who stayed here. Those who took the jobs really did well, I hear. The envy of everyone. Full research facilities. Estates to live on, servants, promises of full freedom of research for whatever they wanted."
"How do you know what the offer was?" Remo asked.
"Because I heard them talking before they left."
"For where?"
"I don't know," said Dr. Keating.
"You know the kind of benefits they get, but you don't know where they get them? That's kind of hard to believe."
"I don't know where they went because none of them ever knew before they went. I do know that they found their jobs just watching and reading the news. They all said there was something in the news that let them know where the positions were. They could figure it out for themselves. Damn lucky petroleum guys."
"In the papers, television, what? Where did they see whatever they saw?" Remo asked.
"The news is all I know. You know, the fast breeder cleans up oil. I always figured they must have seen something about the Middle East or oil or something that told them who to contact."
"Pretty peculiar way to recruit."
"At what was being offered, they could have pasted their applications on the bottoms of septic tanks, and people would still swim down to fill them out," Keating said. "I wish someone would make those sorts of offers to astrophysicists."
"You're an astrophysicist," said Remo. He didn't like the smell of this laboratory. It overlooked the Charles River with Boston on the other side, a quaint city with traffic jams and apparently a disproportionate
39
sense of its own worth. He had been told it thought of itself as the new Athens because of all its universities.
Chiun had pointed out they if the city proclaimed itself the new Athens, then it was an imitation and all imitations were second rate. In the history of the service of Sinanju to emperors and kings, none had ever recorded that Athens considered itself the Babylon of the West or that Rome ever considered itself the Cairo of the Northern Mediterranean. Things that were good, Chiun said, like the pure stroke of the assassin's hand, were good unto themselves. They were not anything else but what they were.
"So stop trying to make me a Korean, Little Father," Remo had answered.
"That is different," said Chiun. "Because we will not make you a second-rate Korean, we will make you a first-rate Korean."
"I'm not Korean, Little Father. I don't want to be Korean."
"The first is an accident of birth," Chiun had said. "But the latter is a disaster of attitude."
"Other than you, Chiun," Remo had said, "I can take any Korean or groups of Koreans, and you know it. And you know who the next master of Sinanju must be."
"That is why you must learn to be Korean," Chiun had said. "It proves my point." And the Master of Sinanju spoke no more.
When he said he had proved a point, Chiun really meant, Remo had come to understand, that the Master of Sinanju had no more good arguments and that the subject would not only not be discussed anymore, it wouldn't even be listened to.
So there they were in the laboratory of MUT, with the astrophysicist babbling away and Chiun looking upon him like some form of local American native and Remo staring at the Charles River.
"Do you understand what I mean?" asked Dr. Keating.
"Sure," said Remo, noticing how sailboats seemed to 40
puff and glide with the wind. They almost had the balance of a good stroke, except for the dislocations at the tiller, which meant the hand of conscious thought was interrupting the smooth flow of nature.
"There will be some form of communication to you in the media. I certainly wish that happened to astrophysicists," said Dr. Keating.
"Swell," said Remo.
"Do you hold your breath?" asked Chiun. "Ever? Want me to do it again?"
Dr. Keating quickly left the corner laboratory, which he knew he would never get at MUT, and returned to his own office.