Chiun looked at him with disgust.
"Keep smoking. When they come for you, they will have you like a pork chop."
"You that sure they'll come for me?" asked Remo, rubbing his head.
"They will come. You are without hope. And don't ask me to help because I can't stand your breath."
He walked past Remo, out of the gymnasium. Remo, still rubbing his head, looked at the gently swinging rings and wondered if he had lost that much of his edge already.
Smith posted extra guards in the corridor outside Remo's room and distributed photos of Dr. Sheila Feinberg to be posted on the wall of Folcroft's gatehouse. If the woman appeared, she was to be admitted without question but Smith was to be notified at once.
Smith thought of assigning a personal bodyguard to Remo to stay with him all the time, but realized Chiun would regard it as an insult. Assigning a guard to Remo, with Chiun around, would be like adding a Boy Scout patrol to the Seventh Army for added firepower.
There was nothing to do but wait. Smith did, in his office, reading the latest reports on two more deaths in Boston during the night. The governor had just declared martial law, which meant the city would be almost as well protected and patrolled as it had been before policemen were required to practice psychiatry, social work, and redemption. If Dostoyevsky were alive today, he thought, he would have entitled his masterpiece just Crime. Crime and Punishment would have no meaning to most of the general public. They had never heard of punishment.
Smith waited.
There had been nine years of hard decisions, made cleanly and promptly. Now, when it had all been done and had come to this, Jacki Bell couldn't decide whether to wear the man-tailored brown suit, which had the virtue of being professional-looking, or the yellow scoop-neck dress, which had the virtue of being cool.
She opted for cool and as she dressed thought how lucky she had been. Lucky enough to get out of a debilitating marriage, lucky enough to stay afloat financially during school years, lucky and smart enough to tough it out and become Jacki Bell, B.A., Jacki Bell, M.A., and finally Jacqueline Bell, Ph.D.
Dr. Jacqueline Bell.
Her luck still held, right up to reading the American Psychoanalytical Journal and finding the advertisement for a job at Folcroft Sanitarium. There had been many applicants but she'd been lucky enough to get the job from Doctor Smith.
If anybody asked her who she thought should be her first patient in therapy at Folcroft, she would pick Harold W. Smith without hesitation.
Throughout the interview he had spoken without looking at her. He had been reading some kind of reports that came in over a computer terminal on his desk. He had stared at a telephone as if expecting it to leap in the air and try to strangle him. He had drummed pencils, looked out his strangely brown-tinted windows, and finally, after asking her the same question three times, told her the job was hers.
As she inspected herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door in the three-room apartment she'd been lucky to find, she shrugged. There were worse cases in the world than Doctor Smith, she supposed. At least he had enough sanity left to hire her.
She had tried to find out what his doctorate was in because he did not have M.D. after his name on the door. But he had not volunteered any information, except to tell her she would be on her own. He would not look over her shoulder. He would not question her professional decisions, and in fact would be most happy if he never had to talk to her again.
That would be okay with her too. He'd get no complaints from her. She counted herself lucky to get the job.
It used to be that a bachelor's degree would guarantee a job. Then college classrooms turned into places that ladled out "relevant education"-like courses in soap opera for students who could barely read and write-and the B.A, was devalued. It took a master's degree to get a job. Then the same thing happened to the master's degree.
So it took a Ph.D. to get a job. But only for awhile. Soon it too was considered worthless. People who hired others went back to using Tennessee Windage and simple reading and writing tests to determine what potential employee might be able to find his way to work in the morning without a keeper. No degree guaranteed a job any more because no degree guaranteed that its holder had an education that went beyond one-two-three-many.
The only good thing about it all, Jacki Bell reflected, was that the doctors of education who started it all were in the same bag. They found their doctorates were meaningless too and they had trouble getting work. Of course, being educated men, they decided they had nothing to do with it. It was all the fault of the evil, corrupt, capitalist society.
She remembered something she had read once in a book of political essays: "He who creates the deluge often gets wet."
Dr. Jacqueline Bell approved of her image in the mirror and brushed imaginary lint off her left shoulder.
The doorbell rang.
She was not expecting anyone but it might be someone from the sanitarium. Because she had not grown up in New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles, she went right to the door and opened it without asking who was there.
A woman stood there, a beautiful woman with long blonde hair, eyes that slanted in an almost feline fashion, and a body so breathtakingly and breakneckedly poured into her clothes she made Jacki feel instant-tacky. The woman smiled showing the most perfect white teeth Jacki had ever seen.
"Doctor Bell?" the woman asked.
Jacki nodded.
"I'm glad to meet you. I'm Doctor Feinberg."
"Oh. Are you from Folcroft?"
"Yes. They asked me to stop by and pick you up on my way in this morning."
"This is my lucky day," Jacki said. "It's so hot out there I don't relish the walk." She stood aside and waved Dr. Feinberg into the apartment. "We're early by the way," Jacki said. "Have you eaten yet? Why not have a bite with me?"
Sheila Feinberg's smile broadened as she entered the apartment.
"Exactly what I had in mind," she said.
Chiun said "Why are those people in blue uniforms in the halls? Did you put them there?"
"That is correct, Master of Sinanju," Smith said formally.
"Why?" asked Chiun. He had stopped calling Smith "emperor." It seemed appropriate when he was away from Folcroft and met Smith infrequently. But close up, Chiun dropped the convention lest Smith think it was an acknowledgement that Smith was of higher rank than Chiun.
"Because I am worried that those people might find Remo. I want him protected."
"How could they find him here?" asked Chiun.
"Because I have told them he is here," Smith said.
"That is a very good reason," Chiun said slowly.
"Chiun, we have to get these creatures. I know you may be upset because I'm possibly endangering Remo's life. But I have to look at more than that. I have to think of the whole country."
"And on its own, how many Masters of Sinanju has this wonderful country produced?" Chiun asked.
"On its own, none," Smith said.
"And you think the country is worth Remo's life nevertheless?"
"If you put it on those terms, yes," Smith said.
"Worth Remo's and mine?" asked Chiun.
"Yes."
"Remo's, mine, and yours?" Chiun persisted.
Smith nodded.
"How many lives does it take before it is no longer worth those lives?" Chiun spat on the floor of Smith's office. "Remo's life just because some fat people in some chilly city got themselves eaten?"
"It's not just them and not just Boston. Unless we can stop these... these creatures, it could spread nationwide. Worldwide. Perhaps even to Sinanju."