«Oh, I'm sorry. I'll look at it now.» Gunner asked the woman with her child to come back in a few minutes. He did not wish to offend them, but he had a wounded man here.
Dr. Nilsson cauterized the wound because there was no antiseptic in the hospital powerful enough to cleanse it. He used a knife heated over coals. Lhasa made no sound, but when he was sure the smell of his burning flesh was in his brother's nostrils, he said:
«I understand now how difficult it must be for you to know that if you had the proper medicines, you could cure people instead of just watching them go off to die.»
«What we do here, Lhasa, is better than nothing.»
«It seems an injustice though, to offer less than we can. It seems an injustice that because of money people must die.»
«What brings about this sudden sense of charity in you, Lhasa?» asked Gunner, wrapping the shoulder in a cheap bandage expertly, so that the rough cloth allowed the wound room to breathe, yet prevented dirt from entering.
«Perhaps it is not charity, brother. Perhaps it is pride, I know what you can do, and to see a Nilsson fail day after day just for lack of money offends me.»
«If you are suggesting that we revert to our traditional family work, find another suggestion, at least one that wasn't decided finally twentyfive years ago. How does the wound feel?»
«As well as sixteenth century medicine can make it.»
«I am surprised the panther got that close to you. You never had that trouble before.»
«I am getting old.»
«You should have no trouble like this until you are in your seventies, considering what you know and what I have taught you.»
«You saw the wound. You see all the wounds. All the infections, tumors, viruses, broken legs, and all the things you cannot help because you haven't supplies. I wonder what kind of supplies one million American dollars could buy. I wonder what kind of hospital that would build. How many natives could be trained in medicine for that much money.»
«For all that much money, Lhasa, oh, the lives we could save. Drugs, doctors, medical technicians. I could make a million dollars into a hundred million dollars worth of healing.» Dr. Nilsson returned the knife to the flames to cleanse it, because fire was the best antiseptic available in the primitive circumstances.
«How many lives could you save with that, brother?»
Dr. Gunner Nilsson thought a moment, then shook his head. «I don't even want to entertain the thought. It makes me too sad.»
«A hundred? A thousand?»
«Thousands. Tens of thousands,» said Gunner. «Because the money could be used to create systems that would perpetuate themselves.»
«I was wondering,» said Lhasa. «If one person's life is worth thousands of native lives.»
«Of course not.»
«But she's white,»
«You know how I feel about that. Too long has the color of a man's skin determined how long he will live.»
«But she is rich and white.»
«All the more reason,» Gunner said.
Lhasa rose from his seat and tried to stretch the muscle of the cauterized wound. It throbbed as if it had its own heartbeat.
«There is a rich white woman in the United States whose very breath could give you the tools to help this land. But we are not in that business anymore so I must forget it. We are the last of the Nilssons. You settled that a long time ago.»
«What are you talking about?» asked Gunner.
«The one million dollars is real, brother. I was not creating a hypothesis for you. I was giving you a plan of action.»
«We will not use the family knowledge.»
«Of course,» said Lhasa, smiling. «I agree with you. And frankly I must confess I believe one rich white life to be worth much more than all the stinking natives of this stinking jungle.»
«What are you doing to me?»
«I am allowing you, dear brother, to watch your patients die so that a rich white American can live. Of course, even that won't save her life because she will be dead shortly anyhow. But enjoy your ideals as you bury your little black friends.»
«Get out of here,» said Gunner. «Get out of my hospital.»
But Lhasa left only the office. He waited in the ante room along with a woman whose gums were purple from chewing betel nut or from infection. Lhasa could not tell the difference, nor did he care very much.
In two minutes, Gunner strode from his private office,
«I'm here, brother,» said Lhasa, laughing, and they left the hospital for a very long walk through the village.
Was Lhasa sure of the money?
Yes. He had heard of it four days ago when he was upriver. He had checked it out very carefully by telephone from the British staff officer's house. He still had some contacts on the continent. And he had finally talked to the man hi charge of disbursing the money. It was firm. One and a half million dollars. The man had heard of the Nilsson family. He would be pleased if they would take the assignment.
«But when I returned you would not even speak to me but ordered me after this panther,» Lhasa said.
«I have this fear, brother, that you like to kill for the sake of killing,» Gunner said.
«Me, brother?»
«Of course you. Why did you take bow and arrow to hunt panther?»
«Did I do that?»
«You know you did. Were you hunting the buffalo again, an animal these villagers tame for their livelihood?»
«A buffalo likes to kill, brother,» said Lhasa.
«Especially when you hunt it. I will tell you what I fear. I fear there is no money or little money in this thing and you just want to kill for enjoyment.»
«Phone yourself, dear brother.» «I would have to teach you techniques, arid I fear you would use them for your own pleasure.»
«You taught me to hunt panther. Have I used that incorrectly?» Lhasa asked.
Dr. Gunner Nilsson paused near a mudhole on the main thoroughfare of the village. A young boy, his legs gnarled by a vitamin deficiency, hobbled along the dirt road.
«And, brother, why do you fear giving me knowledge which is rightfully mine? You know, it ends with me. I cannot pass it on to a son. And should I get about with this knowledge, practicing our family business, how many can I hurt compared with what poverty and ignorance does here?»
Twelve hours later, Lhasa Nilsson was upriver at the British field agent's telephone. He informed the man in Switzerland that he could deposit the money in an old Nilsson account. He had just learned of the account during an afternoon of intense discussion. Of that account and many things. He told the banker there would be no question of his collecting the money. And please keep other people out of the way. Amateurs only confused things.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When he was asked why eleven persons were killed and twenty-four injured at the North Adams Experience, the county sheriff replied that it was the result of close cooperation between all police departments,
«Thank God it wasn't the Beatles,» he said, displaying his knowledge of contemporary music. «We really would have had a mess if they were here, although I think we could have done the same fine job.»
The press agent for Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice did not have so easy an answer. He faced a problem. Should he say the Lice regretted what had happened or should he attempt to advertise it? The newspapers solved his problem for him.
Editorials railed against what they called the violent nature of acid rock. Stories compared the casualties at these concerts to guerilla wars. And a national television commentator asked, coast to coast, prime time: Does America Need This Abomination?
Shea Stadium in New York not only sold out for the Dead Meat Lice concert but the album, North Adams Experience, on which one could hear the bombs, sold 780,000 copies within ninety-six hours of the concert, not counting the bootleg editions produced in Mexico, Canada, and Bayonne, N.J.
What amazed Remo was how quickly the album was produced. When Vickie Stoner insisted she have one
, Remo asked why, since she had heard much of it live.
«To live it again, man.»
«You almost didn't live it the first time,» Remo said.
«You the fuzz or something?» asked Vickie.
«No.»
«Then why are you so heavy on my ass?»
«Because I want to see you alive.»
«Why?»
«Because I love you, Vickie,» said Remo, staring at her with the balanced power he had been taught and had found out was most effective with women.
«Okay, let's ball,» said Vickie. Her tee shirt was over her head and flying across the hotel room by the time her blue jeans were unsnapped and falling around her ankles. She had young rising breasts with perfectly symmetrical ruby crests, firm smooth legs, and just a touch of softness around the hips.
She bounded backwards onto the bed, raising her legs in a V, her red hair fluffing over the pillow. The Waldorf Astoria in New York City had probably never seen such a fast disrobing in all its elegant history, thought Remo.
«What are you waiting for?»
«Stop playing hard to get,» said Remo. «I mean, if you're going to make it an ordeal.»
«C'mon already, I'm ready,» said Vickie.
Remo went to the bed, wondering if even with all his powers he could have removed his slacks, tennis shirt, and loafers as quickly as his charge. He sat down beside her and placed a hand softly on her shoulder. He wanted to talk to her. There were problems and he had to explain that Chiun was not the sweet guru she thought he was, that one did not disturb the Master of Sinanju during his television shows and one never, absolutely never, touched one of his garments or tried to take something of his as a souvenir.
Remo squeezed her shoulder.
«Enough foreplay. Get to it,» said Vickie.
«Vickie, I want to talk to you,» said Remo. His hand moved to her breast.
«When you're ready, let me know,» said Vickie. She squirmed out of bed. «I'm gonna ball the Master. I've waited long enough.»
«Not now. He's watching his serials. No one ever disturbs Chiun when he's watching his soap operas.»
«Until now.»
«Until never,» said Remo. He took her by one of her wrists that flailed at him, brought her back to the bed and, working her body to excitement, brought her to agonizing fulfillment. He tried to avoid falling asleep while doing it.
«Ooooh. Wow. What was that?» groaned Vickie.
«Balling,» said Remo.
«It was never like that, not with anyone I've had. Where did you learn that? Wow. What a bitch. Rule over all. You're bitchen. Heavy. Heavy.»
And she flipped her head back and forth against the pillow, tears of delight streaming from her eyes across her grace of freckles.
«Heavy, heavy.»
Remo brought her to fulfillment two more times until, exhausted, she lay with her arms asprawl, her eyes half shut and a stupid little smile on her lips.
That should hold her for the afternoon, thought Remo, and wondered what she would do if he had really made love to her. It was an old truth that people on drugs only thought they made love better, like drunken drivers feeling very competent before meeting a ditch. Love making, however, was for the cool and the thoughtful and the competent, Remo knew. Even if it did take all the fun out of it.
Seven more days until she testifies, he thought, as he closed the door behind him and went to prowl the hotel, checking to see if anyone was moving in on them and Vickie.
Meanwhile, Vickie was thinking. If that straight could perform that well, imagine what the old gook could do? She had a point there. So, against the warnings of the straight with the short hair who knew how to ball like no one she had ever had, she opened the door to the adjoining room where the somebody was watching television. She heard one of the actors worry about Mrs. Cabot finding out that her daughter was hopelessly hooked on LSD, which was a gasser, man, because as Vickie knew, you didn't become an LSD junkie and besides what could a television show offer, compared to her fresh young body.
So between the somebody and the television she placed her crotch.
It came to pass that day that while the Master of Sinanju was taking his meager respite from the toils of the world, enjoying that one gracious artform flowering from the crude chaos that was white civilization, responding to the true beauty of delicate flowing drama, an apparition appeared before him. While Mrs. Cabot was exploring the gracious grief that was true concerned motherhood, an undressed girl did exhibit herself before the Master of Sinanju, as if there were some special attraction to her vagina as opposed to all others.
Chiun removed it. Remo heard the thud down the hallway. He ran to Chiun's room and saw Vickie crumpled in the corner, her back against the wall, her pink duff pointed ceilingward, her head tucked against her chest, her breasts pressing against her cheeks.
«You killed her,» yelled Remo. «You killed her. We're supposed to keep her alive and you killed her.»
He skipped rapidly around Chiun, careful not to get between him and the picture, and listened to Vickie's heartbeat with his fingertips. Stopped. She was dead or in shock. He leveled her out on the floor and massaged the heart as Chiun had taught him. With his fingernails he created rapid movement in the hair as Chiun had taught him. The heart moved under Remo's ministrations, he released his hands slightly and her heart was beating by itself. He felt for broken bones, a rib that might have been sent into another vital organ. Chiun had taught that an opponent's rib is like a spear next to his heart, liver, and spleen.
The ribs were all right. His fingertips moved to the stomach and back, searching, as Sinanju was taught to search, to know the body through the hands. Then down to the soles of the feet and the toes. He had not fully learned this yet, but Chiun had taught that in the feet are all the nerves. One could, by manipulation of the toes, tell even if eyesight were failing. All Remo learned was that Vickie hadn't washed her feet.
«Heavy, man,» groaned Vickie. Remo pressed his hands to her lips lest she further interrupt As the Planet Revolves.
And thus it came to pass that when the
Master of Sianaju had removed the obstruction of his modest pleasure, his student did further interrupt beauty with petty tantrums about incidents which may or may not have happened. Yet, under this assault against beauty, the Master of Sinanju did endure, for through the years, no matter how carefully he had tried to explain, his pupil had never learned to appreciate the one true beauty of his gross culture. It was not likely that he would learn now.
Chiun endured the sounds from the floor behind him. He endured the interruption of the girl, who said, «Heavy, man.» He endured it all, for his heart was gentle enough and humble enough to endure almost anything.
And when the dramas for the day were over, he heard his ungrateful pupil rail against his pitiful attempt to enjoy a day, uninterrupted, of his beloved art.
«You could have called me. I would have gotten her out of your way. I would have removed her. You might have done what we're trying to prevent. Did you know that?»
Chiun did not answer, for how could one communicate with the insensitive? He would let his pupil vent his silliness, for Chiun's gentle heart could bear all outrages. Such was the purity of the spirit of the Master of Sinanju.
«Thank God there weren't any bones broken, but I don't know how, Chiun. She hit the wall like a catapult.»
Why not? She had intruded like a … a … like a white man. But Chiun would not discuss that. There were some things one forgave one's pupil. There was one thing he could not forgive, however, and that was incompetence. On that he would speak.
«If your charge, that you were here to protect, was not with you, then why is your anger at me? It is not at me that your anger rails but at yourself for if you were properly discharging your duties, she could never have been here.»
«I was clearing the rims as you taught me, Little Father, creating safety by going outward instead of staying inward.»
«You cleared noth
ing if you left her alone to discover trouble. Where is she now?»
«She was able to walk and I put her in the other room so she wouldn't run afoul of you again while the shows were on.»
«Then you are not with her?»
«Obviously.»
«Then you are obviously a fool. This child has some good qualities I have not previously found in Americans. She understands the respect due a Master of Sinanju. You should have taught her about the American television treasures.»
«I have a revelation for you, Little Father. She doesn't know Sinanju from the Assassins of Arabia, and she'd laugh at you if you tried to tell her about soap operas.»
«The assassins were not of quality. Why would you compare the House of Sinanju to men who smoked their courage? And laugh? Why would anyone laugh at a Master of Sinanju?»
«You don't understand the counter culture in this country.»
«How can one have a counter to something that does not exist? Truly puzzling. But what is not puzzling is your incompetence. I have told you what you must do, but you do not do it. You prefer to argue and fail than to listen and succeed. Such is the case with many people, but never before with a pupil of the House of Sinanju.»
So with scarcely a «yes, Little Father,» Remo went into the other room and Vickie Stoner was gone. He checked the bathroom and the hall. He went to the stairwells and listened. He ran to the lobby. But Vickie Stoner was not there. Just a small commotion at the registration desk. A Swedish man with a very deep tan, as if he had lived in the sun for thirty years, was arguing with the clerk and with three blacks in black, red, and green skullcaps.
«My name is Nilsson and I expressly made a reservation for today. You must have it. Lhasa Nilsson.»
CHAPTER NINE
Abdul Hareem Barenga, alias Tyrone Jackson, didn't give the bellboy a tip because he was a lacky of imperialism, an Uncle Tom and an Oreo. These were the real reasons.
The incidental reason why was that these white mu-fus at the registration desk downstairs had demanded the room fee in advance which had taken the last of the money from St. Louis.
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