"It stinks," said Remo.
"It's home," said Chiun.
"Stinks. "
"Home."
"You are both welcome," said the prime minister.
"We've got business. We'd better be leaving," said Remo, and he nudged Chiun.
"Shortly we will be back and then your life will be as safe as your mother's should have been. We will sacrifice at the Ganges for her."
"And may a thousand gods bring good fortune to you, Master of Sinanju. And also to your son."
"Yeah, thanks," said Remo, nudging a litter bearer with his heel to speed their departure.
Chiun was outraged all the way to Gupta, a two-day journey by train. Remo had met a ruler who wished to employ Sinanju and all he could say was, "Yeah, thanks." Where was Remo's training? Had he forgotten the laudations already, the praises for a king or a duke or a prince or a pharaoh?
"Quite honestly, little father," said Remo, "I assumed the laudations for pharaohs were not something I was going to need right away."
"It's good to learn. "
"Why?"
"Because it is proper training. The cloth is made of a thousand threads even if you don't see the crucial ones that hold the seams."
"What good does it do me to know the lower kingdom has to be mentioned before the upper kingdom and that my voice must rise on the first inflection in Thebes, or that only during a drought should I mention Luxor or Abu Simbel to a pharaoh?"
"Because it does," said Chiun. "You don't greet a friendly monarch with an American 'Yeah, thanks.' That's what you say to the lunatic Smith. Not to a real ruler who inherited a throne from his mother and may well give it to an heir, who just might have good work for the House of Sinanju."
This said, Chiun refused to talk further and was silent through Patwar, Kanpur, Galior, Nagpur, Nizamabad, and Tirupati, until they reached the mountains that surrounded the valley of Gupta, where they saw the steep paths up to the mountain ridges.
They could smell the strange odors of Cyclod B still lingering in the air-not strong enough to be harmful, for only they could sense it. But it was there nevertheless, faint hints of a substance that could fatally damage a nervous system. Remo and Chiun used different breathing patterns to keep their pores open. But other travelers hardly noticed the odor. There was a convoy of medical workers and of course truckloads and truckloads of American cameramen.
A child was hit by a speeding army truck, and an American news team jumped out to interview him, while the mother tried to revive him.
But as soon as they found out America wasn't responsible, one of the cameramen called out, "Nothing here. A hundred thousand people die like this every week. Doesn't mean anything."
One of the newsmen wanted to interview Remo, but he dodged him. Chiun, seeing a camera, allowed himself to be spoken to.
He was here for a vacation, he said, to be among his good friends in Gupta.
"But most of them are dead," said the reporter.
"Whoever is left," said Chiun.
There was a strange silence in the city as the caravans made their way down into the bowl valley that housed the city of Gupta.
In one sector was a modern array of tanks and pipes that made up International Carborundum . They appeared still to be working. Remo felt Chiun touch his arm.
"Look," said Chiun. "Look."
"At what?"
"At everything. Has insolence also blinded your eyes? What do you see?"
"I see a city. I see mountains. I think the factory is still working. I don't know if it's still dangerous or what. "
"You see and you don't see," said Chiun. "It was gas that killed. Look around you."
"These mountains make a bowl," said Remo.
"Now we are supposed to look for people who cause accidents, who make profit from them. If this is so, then they chose their site well. Whoever did this knows how to use the land. The gas would sit in the bowl a long time and not be blown away."
In the city, life was returning. The places of those who had died were taken by people from other cities who had no places. It occurred to Remo, seeing this, that the population explosion people criticized was really nature's way of keeping the race alive. Though thousands had died horribly, in time it would not even be remembered.
A young boy with large dark eyes and a big smile ran after Remo and Chiun's litter, begging and not getting anything, his smile turning into a frown and his happy chatter to curses. Remo laughed and gave the boy some change. Immediately scores of children poured from doorways and ran after the litter.
In their joy and laughter and in their numbers Remo felt that in India life was stronger than death. Chiun had never said this. He said there was an eternal balance between what the Masters called light and darkness, life and death, something and nothing.
Chiun also insisted on making proper sacrifices at five different temples to five different gods. At the temple of Shiva he suggested Remo make a personal sacrifice of a goat or a dove.
Remo, who had been raised in a Catholic orphanage in Newark, looked at the many-armed model of the god surrounded by symbolic flame, the "destroyer of worlds" as he was called, and just shook his head. He couldn't do it.
"He is special to you, Remo. All the prophecies about a dead man returning to become a Master of Sinanju involve Shiva, Remo," said Chiun.
"Yeah," said Remo. "I know." But he didn't go into the temple and he didn't make a sacrifice. He did not say a Hail Mary either. He just turned away and went back to the litter.
At the factory Remo was told he could not enter, but must wait in line.
"You cannot get work by pushing ahead and showing rudeness," said the official at the gate.
Remo looked back over the line.
"You mean all these people are waiting for work here?"
"Of course, these are good jobs.".
"But I thought these were dangerous jobs. Deadly jobs."
"Don't you dare say that. We will never consider you. "
From the litter Chiun berated the man for not showing more respect, and freely used the name of the prime minister. The gates opened and the guardian gave a small bow.
"This is civilization," said Chiun. "Where in America do you get proper courtesy?"
"You mean keeping hundreds waiting while we are shown deferential treatment?"
"Of course. You are against deferential treatment?"
"Yeah. Kind of. I kind of feel sorry for these people. I hate to see them ignored like that, just for us."
"Just for us?" asked Chiun with anger. "There is never just us. There is, most of all, most importantly, us. But I should not be surprised that you think of 'us' as a just, as nothing, something to be ignored and reviled. You are the one who does not care for money."
"Right. We don't need it. What do we need it for? You have all the robes you can ever wear. We get everything we ask for paid for by the organization, and that isn't much. It's a roof over our heads at most. So what else do we need?"
"Remo, do not make me sick," said Chiun.
At the Gupta plant of International Carborundum , Chiun freely bandied about the name of the prime minister and was accorded special respect. Seeing that he was shameless in his demands, the Indian employees, who respected shamelessness, gave him just about everything he wanted. While the American investigating engineers were delayed, dallied with, lied to, and fawned over to mislead them, Chiun and Remo got the real scoop.
"It was some stupid little valve that went. How should I know?" said the president of the local plant, Rashad Palul. He wore a lightweight English suit with an English school tie. He smoked English cigarettes and lit them with an English lighter. His English diction and grammar were impeccable. Remo felt like he was talking to some British lord.