Chiun, of course, had not killed the salesman. Oh, no. He made that clear. He had merely attempted to become part of the computer age. Through the centuries that the House of Sinanju had worked for emperors and rulers, tributes had piled up at the small village on the West Korean Bay. Gifts from the Greekling, Alexander, from pharaohs and kings, from all who had wished to employ the ancient Korean house of assassins. Gifts too numerous to list. Computers were good at listing such things and so Chiun, who liked the gadgets of the West, called a salesman and purchased a computer, one that could do lists well.
The salesman had arrived that day, bearing a lovely machine, finely tooled, with a beautiful gray box to house it and a keyboard of glistening keys.
Chiun explained the problems of listing different weights, because the ancient Masters would get paid in weights of stone, and also in dramits, pulons and refids, such as a major refid of silk or a minor refid of silk.
"No problem," the salesman had said. "How big is a refid? I'll just put it right in the computer."
"It depends on the quality of the silk," Chiun had said. "A small refid of fine silk is better than a large refid of poor silk. It is both quantity and quality."
"I see. So a refid means value."
"Yes," Chiun said.
"No problem," the salesman said. "How much is a single refid worth in money?"
"One refid?" asked Chiun.
"Sure," said the salesman pleasantly.
"A single refid is equal to three and seven-eights barons during the time of the Ming Dynasty, or one thousand, two hundred and twelve Herodian shekels from that fine king of Judea."
It had taken the whole morning but the salesman had studiously set up a value system for the many different weights and measures of the House of Sinanju. Chiun's fingers fluttered expectantly as he waited for the moment when he himself could touch the keys and record, for the first time in centuries, all the glorious tributes of the House of Sinanju. For this meant in centuries to come, every Master to follow would have to think of Chiun when they examined the wealth that would be passed on to them.
"Can we put my name on every page?" Chiun asked.
"Sure," said the salesman, and he programmed every page to list automatically and forever that this accounting had been started by Chiun. They could even make the pages shorter so that Chiun's name would appear more often.
"Should we say 'the Great Chiun'?" Chiun asked.
"Sure," said the salesman again, and he inserted it into the program. Such was Chiun's happiness that tears almost came to his eyes.
The old Korean sat before the keyboard and touched it with his fingers. Then he began to list the modern tributes sent by submarine from the new nation of America to Korea as payment for "the Great Chiun's" teaching services.
He paused, imagining future generations reading this. They would tell stories of him, just as he, as a student, had been told stories of the Great Wang and other past Masters of Sinanju. He had told Remo the stories so that the young white man would understand what it was to be a Master of Sinanju.
And then, as Chiun pressed the precious keys again, a dull gray mass appeared suddenly on the screen and all the letters were gone.
"Where is my name?" he asked.
"Oh, you hit the delete-key format instead of the file-key format," the salesman said.
"Where is my name?"
"If we had made a backup disk, your name would still be there. But we didn't. So, in the future, you're going to have to make a backup disk, do you see?"
"Where is my name?" asked Chiun. "It was deleted."
"My name was in there forever. That is what you said."
"Yes. It was."
"Forever," Chiun explained, "does not have a 'was'." Forever is always an 'is.' Where is my name?"
"You struck the delete-key format."
"Where is my name?"
"It's not there."
"I put it there and you put it there," Chiun said. "You said it was there forever. Bring it back."
"We can always reenter your name," the salesman said.
At that point, realizing he was dealing with someone of little understanding, Chiun in his fairness made an offer to the salesman. If he would bring back Chiun's name, Chiun would buy the computer.
"We can always reenter it," the salesman said. "But the old name's gone forever." He chuckled. "Names come and names go. Just like people. Heh, heh. Come and go."
And thus it was that the salesman went. He had reached for the plug to disconnect the computer and Chiun, of course, could not let the computer that had failed leave with his name in it.
That was the first unpleasantness of the day. The second was Remo's return, jumping to a conclusion that Chiun had somehow created a body for him to dispose of. Chiun hadn't created anything. He had suffered because of a computer that did not work. Chiun had suffered from having his name deleted. And the salesman had suffered from having his existence deleted. Having unintentionally hit one delete-key format, Chiun had hit another, the one located above the salesman's ear, at his temple. driving in a fingernail for a permanent delete.
"I don't suppose you want to know what that man did to my name," said Chiun.
"I don't care," Remo said. "He's your body, not mine."
"I didn't think you would care for the truth," Chiun said. "After all, you don't care what happens to the glory of the House of Sinanju and you never have."
"I'm not disposing of the body," said Remo.
"Well, neither am I," said Chiun.
Both of them heard the footsteps outside, the halting steps of a man whose unenlightened body was deteriorating in the common Western manner of old age. "Smith called. He will be here this afternoon," Chiun said.
"This is the afternoon," Remo said.
"And here he is," Chiun said. An elderly man, his face gaunt, his thinning hair white, walked up the creaky steps and knocked at the door.
Remo answered it.
"How did it go today?" asked Smith. "Did you get the hard disk and the backups?"
"Hard disk and backups," said Remo. "Right. They've been taken care of."
He shut the door behind Smith. Remo only knew that he had stayed young by noticing how old Smith had gotten during their years together, how the man's movements became restricted, how his steps had started their dissipation toward an inevitable shuffle.
Remo wondered sometimes if this was because Smith had never learned to use his body properly or if it was the tension of his work that was crippling him. For almost twenty-five years, Smith had headed CURE, the secret agency whose mission was to fight America's enemies, inside or outside the law. Remo was the organization's killing arm, and it was his activities that the two unlucky computer executives had stumbled onto.
Remo decided to make Smith feel better. "Everything's been taken care of," he said. "But you ought to get a new system for your computers. Everybody seems able to break into them these days."
"We're taking care of that," Smith said, sinking gingerly into a chair: "We have, thank God, discovered a genius who'll set us up in such a way that you won't have to terminate any more poor souls who stumble onto our files. But we have other important problems facing us now."
"We stand ready to serve, Emperor Smith," said Chiun. He refused to call the head of the secret organization anything but Emperor. Through the ages, Masters of Sinanju had always worked for royalty.
Smith nodded but his face suddenly showed alarm. "What is that?" he asked Remo, pointing across the room.
"Nothing," Remo said. "It's Chiun's."
"That's a body," Smith said.
"Right," Remo said. "It's Chiun's."
Smith looked at Chiun, who said, "Would you like to purchase a computer?" Then, in Korean, he reminded Remo never to discuss family business in front of Smith.
"We've got to get out of here," Smith said. "We can't be discovered by the police."