"According to the best experts, American Indians came from Asia. They're a mix of Mongols, Chinese and Koreans."
"South Koreans, perhaps," sniffed Chiun, whose ancestors came from the cold, forbidding north. "Our blood is northern. We do not pollute it with yellow grains."
And that had been the end of the discussion.
As they stood on the black Iowa loam, Remo decided to pick up the argument. "I don't see what's so terrible about corn," he muttered.
Chiun considered for a time. Whether he was considering Remo's question or the fragrant desolation about him wasn't clear at first. Finally, he spoke. "It is too sweet."
"It's a nice change of pace from rice," Remo said.
"Rice is sweeter than corn. Rice is sweet in a clean way. Corn is heavy and starchy and honey sweet."
"Nothing wrong with honey," remarked Remo, kicking at a well-chewed ear of corn.
"Honey is permissible in tea. You would not honey your rice."
"No," Remo admitted.
They walked. Remo picked up pieces of fallen cornstalks and examined them. Chiun's hazel eyes raked the surroundings, taking everything in. He seemed uninterested in the details.
"No twister did this," Remo remarked.
Chiun nodded sagely. "A plague. It has all the earmarks of a plague."
"Speaking of ears," said Remo, "I still don't see what's so terrible about corn."
"Your foolish question reminds me of Master Kokmul."
Remo made a thinking face. "Kokmul. I don't know him."
"He lived long ago. But you and he would have enjoyed one another's company," said Chiun.
Remo brightened. "How's that?"
"He was very much like you-foolish."
Remo's shoulders fell.
They continued walking.
"Kokmul lived after the unthinking Columbus came to the so-called New World and brought back to Europe the pestilence called corn," Chiun said slowly, his eyes roving over the fields as if expecting the dead corn to rear up and jump them.
"Pestilence?"
"Corn grew in the Spain of the spend-thrift Isabella, from there spreading east and west until it reached Cathay," said Chiun in a doleful tone.
"China, huh? Funny, I never saw corn in Korea."
"Corn did come to Korea, thanks to Kokmul the Foolish. But it was cast out by his successor."
"I guess I'm about to hear another legend of Sinanju," said Remo, his feet tramping corn leaves without making them rustle.
"Then listen well, for this is a lesson the House cannot afford to learn twice."
Chiun's voice became low and grim. "In the days of Kokmul, there was work in Cathay. The nature of this work was unimportant. It is only important to know that from time to time, Kokmul ventured north of Sinanju on foot to ford the river known today as the Yalu and performed certain services for a certain prince of Cathay.
"On one occasion, Kokmul came to a grove that he first took for young sorghum. Except it was not the season for young sorghum, but tall sorghum. But these green plants, which grew in orderly rows, were neither."
Remo looked around. The corn had been planted in orderly rows with the stalks well-spaced before they were cut down.
"Now, farmers tended these plants that were sown in rows, and it was harvest time," said Chiun. "Weary from his journey, Kokmul stopped and asked a farmer about his unfamiliar crop.
"The farmer, honoring the Master of Sinanju, snapped off the top of one plant and stripped it of its green leaves, exposing a vile yellow thing like a demon's smile with numerous blunt teeth protecting it."
"An ear of corn," said Remo.
"Yes."
"Never heard it described in such appetizing terms," Remo grunted.
Chiun waved the remark away into the corn.
"The farmer showed Kokmul how to boil the yellow thing in water so that its hard teeth did not break human teeth when bitten, and how to eat it safely, as well as how to prepare it as bread or meal. And Kokmul, being an innocent in the ways of corn, became hooked by the wondrous ways in which corn could be eaten."
Remo cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Hooked?"
"You would call it hooked. Kokmul became a slave to corn, is the way it is inscribed in the Book of Sinanju."
"Okay..."
"So taken with his new addiction was Kokmul that instead of venturing on to the princely court that had summoned him, Kokmul gathered up ears of hard corn and bore them back to the unsuspecting village of Sinanju, then a paradise of rice and fish."
"And laziness," added Remo.
Chiun said nothing to that. He went on. "As you know, Remo, the ground around our ancestral village is not the best. Little grows, except rice in paddies, and often not even that. It was thought by Kokmul that this new thing called corn would grow where other plants did not. So, planting the corn as the Chinese farmer had instructed, Kokmul brought the demon corn to Korea."
They walked along, their feet seeming to float over the loose black loam. At least they left no footprints, though they walked with a firm tread.
"In time," Chiun resumed, "the green stalks rose up. Thick they became. Heavy they grew. The sinister Gold threads that made more corn grow showed themselves like painted harlots peeping out from their hanging tresses. It was much work to raise corn. Not so much as to harvest rice, which is backbreaking work. But it was difficult nonetheless.
"And when the corn was sufficiently tall and ripe, Master Kokmul summoned the villagers and showed them how to strip and shuck the ears and how to store them for the long winter with the winter cabbage. That autumn and winter, the bellies of the villagers were heavy with corn, Remo. And they grew fat."
"Not to mention dumb and happy," said Remo.
A withering glance from Chiun's closest eye stilled Remo's grin. This was serious business to Chiun.
"The First Corn Year passed peacefully. There was no trouble. The second was not so bad, for the corn grew steadily, but not consumingly. Then came the Third Corn Year."
"Uh-oh. What happened? The crops failed?"
Chiun shook his aged head. "No, the pestilence began."
Chiun walked along, narrowed eyes taking in minute details of the ruined corn in his path. Where he could step on a loose kernel, he did. The old Korean seemed to take special delight in extinguishing the half-ripe grains.
"I have warned you, Remo, that corn is not as good or as pure as rice. I have told you it is to be avoided. I have never told you why it is a plague and a pestilence to be crushed wherever it rears its lurid, toothsome head."
Remo grinned. "As they say, I'm all ears."
"You will not laugh when my story is over." Chiun kicked a corncob out of his path. "Rice, when it is digested, nourishes. No grain of rice enters a man's stomach that is not consumed. Not so the sneaky and insidious corn grain."
They came upon a herd of spotted cows busily munching the fallen cobs. The cows hardly took notice of them.
"The corn kernel is hardy and stubborn," Chiun continued. "It cries out to be eaten, but once digested, it does not always surrender its nourishment to the consumer. Some kernels survive, to pass undigested from the body of man and beast alike."
Chiun stopped and gazed down at his feet.
Remo looked down, too.
"What do you see, my son?" asked Chiun.
"Looks like a meadow muffin to me," Remo said.
"Look closer."
Remo knelt. It was cow dung, all right, already dried by the sun. Peeping from the dark mass were glints of smooth golden yellow.
"What do you find so interesting, Remo?" Chiun asked in a thin voice.
"I see the cows have been at the corn."
"Yet the wily corn has escaped the cow's diligence."
"Cows don't chew their food as thoroughly as they could, I guess," said Remo.
"Nor do people. Not even the villagers of Sinanju."
Remo got up. Chiun met his gaze with his thin hazel eyes.