Dream Thing

Chiun nodded with his eyes. “You are a white. You are an American. You lack the ability to have faith.”

Remo knew this wasn’t Chiun’s typical bashing of things Caucasian and Western.

“It is the way of this world now,” Chiun continued. “Perhaps it is inevitable that faith is sacrificed to fact, until faith can no longer be tolerated, even in the absence of fact. The Emperor is a product of this era, old as he is. Despite all his years and all that he has witnessed, he will not allow himself to have faith. He believes in Sa Mangsang, here, in his core.” Chiun moved a hand to his abdomen. “But he will not allow himself to believe in Sa Mangsang here, in his mind, because he does not have the facts that make it plausible.”

Was Smitty really such a fool that he would allow himself to be blinded to the truth just because the truth was inexplicable by his data? Remo decided that Smitty was just that foolish.

“He lacks faith in himself,” Chiun added.

“He has faith in himself. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so damn stubborn about sticking to his guns.”

“No. What he believes here is a part of him.” Chiun motioned toward his stomach again: “That is where his instinct and his intuition are manifest. What he knows of Sa Mangsang in his head is only factious elements of truth that may or may not mean what they pretend to mean.”

Remo meditated on this for a moment. “Smitty lacks faith in his own gut feeling. If we all went with our gut feeling, the world would be a mess. We’d be animals.”

“We are not animals, and our instincts are not wholly animal, and our instincts are tempered with wisdom that an animal cannot possess. It is therefore not instinct.”

‘It’s faith,” Remo said, feeling a surge of pleasure as he understood the distinction, only to feel downcast again.

After a long moment, Chiun said, “You find no comfort in this. You know what faith is, but you do not know how to achieve faith. This is the symptom of the Western world—atheism or agnosticism. No one believes.”

“You can’t make yourself have faith. Not in Jewish carpenters or elder gods or even in yourself.”

“Those who need it turn in desperation to whatever storefront religion is close at hand. This explains the Church of Elvis.”

“I’m sort of desperate. Why can’t I bring myself to have faith in myself? Am I going to walk around for the rest of my life trying to believe in what I believe in?”

Chiun raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe I’m really just a grunt who’ll always need a CO making the decisions. You know, I’ve always felt like one of those guys who doesn’t get paid to think and it ticked me off. Even before CURE, I mean, and all these years with CURE. I finally arranged things so I do get paid to think and, surprise, surprise, I’m not very good at it.”

“No,” Chiun agreed, “you are not very good at it.”

Remo was taken aback. He had been insulted by Chiun a hundred times in just the past week, but somehow this comment came as a genuine slap in the face.

“Why?” he demanded. “What do you mean?”

Chiun raised one finger and his face broke into the smile of a child on a picnic. “There it is, Remo Williams.” Then he pointed his bony finger at Remo’s stomach.

What? Remo wanted to make the old man tell him what the hell he was talking about, and then he knew. He did have faith. A speck of it, sitting at the bottom of his bucket of self-defense. It was small, but hard as a diamond.

Chiun retired to his room while Remo stayed awake, examining the pebble of faith and wondering, exactly, where it was supposed to go.

Chapter 31

Smith was a scientist, but not the right kind of scientist for this kind of work. He wasn’t even sure what the right kind of scientist was.

He needed somebody to tell him that his own calculations were wrong. They must be wrong.

The Folcroft Four, which spent twenty-four hours a day watching television, alerted Smith when an interesting guest appeared on one of the news networks. The giant mainframes watched and listened for certain keywords and phrases in a hundred languages.

The guest was interviewed by the feature anchor, who wore a perpetually amused smile and often reported on the ridiculous behavior of Hollywood celebrities. When he interviewed a scientist, it was a guaranteed nutjob.

The nutjob today had come to the same conclusion as Harold Smith, and Mark Howard, and Master Chiun.

“How much ice will build up, Dr. Dell?”

“I don’t know. It’s impossible to predict the amount of pressure behind the steam vents. The ice is building in a cone shape, which is structurally strong, but the hollow steam vent in the center will eventually collapse and plug the vent.”

“Problem solved,” said the features host with a smile.

“If the steam vent is powerful enough, it will simply build up pressure and heat until it opens a new release vent. It’s already burned through a four-mile-thick ice covering in the Antarctic Plain. There’s no reason to think—”

“But what will stop it, Dr. Dell?” The host looked at the audience and gave them a get-a-load-of-this smile. Time for the punch line.