"I saw Roman jewels in your village," Remo told Chiun.
"Those. And a baggage train of marble for the floors, and gold, of course. Always gold."
"So how did Sinanju cause the fall of the empire?" Remo asked.
"The roads went back to the robbers," Chiun said. "Soon the people knew that, and soon none would travel those roads."
"But Rome didn't end then. It took a few more centuries, didn't it?" Remo said.
"It died then," Chiun said. "It took a few more centuries to fall down, but it became a corpse the day Lu forgot his mission and left."
"But no one blames Sinanju for that," Remo said. "Only you know about it."
"And now you."
"I'm not telling anyone. So Sinanju doesn't have to be blamed for losing an empire at all."
"Blame is blame, but facts are facts. Lu lost Rome. I will not be the Master who loses America," Chiun said.
"What happened to Lu the Lunkhead?" Remo asked.
"Much more happened, but that will be for another time," Chiun said.
Remo rose and looked out at the cold whiteness of the Rockies. The sky was a delicate pale blue, cold, severe, and demanding. It reminded him of the code that bound him to Sinanju and to his duty. He knew he was returning to the battle. He was returning to those people who so unnerved him by their willingness to die. He would do it, but he didn't want to. He just knew he had to.
"What is troubling you?" Chiun asked.
Remo looked at him and said, as Chiun had said of the rest of Lu's story, "That will be for another time." And Chiun merely smiled and took Remo's arm and led him from the cave.
In the ashram, Kali the goddess, Kali the invincible, stretched out a shining new arm and pushed it forward so that even the worshipers could see she was bringing something to her bosom. But there was nothing in the hand yet.
"He is coming. Her lover is coming," the disciples chanted. And Holly Rodan, the overprivileged child from Denver, was the happiest of all. She knew who the lover would be. She had seen him kill in North Carolina.
"What was he like?" the others asked.
"He had dark hair and dark eyes, and high cheekbones. And he was thin but he had very thick wrists."
"And what else?"
"You should have seen him kill," Holly said.
"Yes?"
"He was. . ." Holly Rodan gasped, her body quivering with memories of that day. " . . . he was wonderful."
Chapter Nine
A. H. Baynes lived in days of honey and sunshine. If he could have whistled or sung or danced on his desk, he would have, but he had not learned any of those techniques at the Cambridge Business School.
What he knew was that the deaths had stopped aboard just Folks Airlines and that International Mid-America Airlines was as good as dead. Its stock had vanished through the floor of the stock exchange, but just Folks's was soaring and would go even higher when his new promotional campaign-"Just Folks, the Friendly, Safe Airline"-hit the newspapers in another week.
He thought that he had performed very well, even though, for some reason, his father's image popped into his mind and he knew his father would have called it cheating. "You've always been a smart-ass cheat, A.H."
But the Cambridge Business School philosophy that had directed the industrial thinking of America since the sixties and had remolded the armed forces according to its management systems was something that A. H. Baynes thought his father was ill-equipped to comment on. Daddy had run a little grocery store in Beaumont, Texas, and on his only visit to Cambridge had told A. H. that the school was filled "with a pack of pissants with the morals of rattlers and the brains of cactus weeds."
"Dad is such a card," A. H. had said, trying to laugh it off.
"You pissants don't know bucks and you don't know goods," his father had said again. "You know talk. God help us all."
When Cambridge graduates had redesigned the armed forces along modern management lines, Daddy had said, "There goes the army."
But his father didn't understand that it did not matter that the American military leadership was becoming more comfortable in Bloomingdale's than on the battlefield. That wasn't important. It wasn't part of the new code.
Armies didn't have to win and cars didn't have to run and nothing manufactured had to work to be a success, according to the new code. What had to be ensured was that the graduates of Cambridge Business School were always employed. That was a maximum-priority item and its graduates learned that lesson well.
The days of honey and sunshine that A. H. Baynes now enjoyed were due to that training. But lately he had begun to wonder if maybe there was something else involved. Maybe there was a god and maybe that god had singled him out for special success. And maybe, just maybe, that god had something to do with the ugly multi-armed statue in that storefront church in New Orleans.
Accordingly, one day, the entire A. H. Baynes family, except the dog, showed up at the ashram and presented themselves to Ban Sar Din.
Ban Sar Din did not like their looks. The woman had a mousy face and wore a neat white suit. The boy had on a little green blazer, white shirt, tie. His gray pants were pressed sharp and his black shoes were shined.
The girl wore a white skirt and carried a little white pocketbook.
"This is my family. We want to join your services," A. H. Baynes said. He wore a dark blue suit with a striped red-and-black tie.
"It's not Sunday, Daddy," said the boy.
"Shh," said Mrs. Baynes. "Not everyone worships on a Sunday, dear. There are other places to worship than in a big church."
Ban Sar Din took A. H. Baynes aside. "You're bringing your family into that ashram? Out there?"
"Yes," said Baynes. "I have searched my heart and I find that I wish to be a part of something meaningful and spiritually rewarding. I want to belong to Kali."
"They're crazy killers," hissed Ban Sar Din, louder than he wanted to. "That's your family."
"They're going to kill us, Daddy. They're going to kill us. I don't like it. I want to go to our church," cried the girl.
"Nobody is going to kill us, dear," said Mrs. Baynes soothingly. "Daddy would not permit it."
"He said so," said the girl, pointing to the balloon of a man in his white silk suit. Ban Sar Din blushed.
"Daddy says this is a rewarding faith, dear, and we have to give it a chance," said Mrs. Baynes, and turned to Ban Sar Din to ask if the ashram offered yoga programs, breathing, discussion groups, chanting, and had guest speakers.
Ban Sar Din did not know what else to do, so he nodded forlornly.
"See?" Mrs. Baynes told her children. "It's just like our church at home."
Mrs. Baynes did not mind that there was no minister talking about. Jesus or salvation. There hadn't been much talk about that at her church back home for a long time either. Back home, there was usually some revolutionary leader giving a speech against America and then being invited to one of the homes, where if he hadn't talked about overthrowing America, he would not have been allowed in the neighborhood. It didn't matter to Mrs. Baynes, because she never listened to the sermons anyway. One joined a church to be with the sort of people one wanted to be with. These people did not seem to fit that category, but good old A. H. would never let her and the children join a religion that was not socially acceptable.
She heard about some man who was supposed to be coming for the goddess, Kali, to be Her lover. Not at all unlike the Second Coming, her other church used to talk about before they got into revolution.