Warren Murphy: High Priestess

"No argument there," said Remo.

"I do not see the joss without a face," said Lobsang.

"No doubt it is kept on a sacred altar that we must locate," Kula said firmly.

"Listen closely," said Chiun. "The words of the new Bunji Lama will unveil the truth if only you heed them."

The program continued. The Master of Sinanju pretended to watch as intently as the others, but he was actually observing the actions of his guests. Their faces, in the shifting glow of the television screen, were tight with concentration. The Mongol, Kula, wore the rapt expression of an accepting child. But Lobsang Drom contorted his long face with every sentence that reached his ears. From his saffron robe, he extracted a Buddhist rosary of tiny jade skulls and fingered them nervously.

"How do you come up with all these past lives, Squid?" Poopi Silverfish was saying. "I mean, do they come to you in dreams or something?"

"Past-life regressions. My guru taught me how to invoke the buried memories. But we broke up. Now I do it all myself."

Poopi Silverfish rolled her eyes, and her dark face broke out in a smile that managed to be beatific and goofy at the same time. "You know, sometimes I like to think I was the Queen of Sheba about a million years ago."

"I was a princess in the lost continent of Moo twenty million years ago. My name was Toomazooma."

"How did it turn out?"

"Moo sank and I drowned. To this day my heart pounds uncontrollably whenever I slip into the Jacuzzi.

"I'm that way about showers ever since Psycho."

Kula muttered, "I do not understand much of her words, therefore she is very wise."

"No doubt her guru was a very wise man," suggested Chiun in a bland voice.

No one challenged this statement. Least of all Remo.

As the program wound down, the Most Holy Lobsang Drom Rinpoche remained unconvinced.

"That is not the Bunji Lama," he said bitterly.

"Do you distrust what your lazy eyes have seen, Priest?" Kula demanded. "Or what your ears have heard? It is the incarnation, the tulku, the Light That is Coming, himself."

"Herself," Remo inserted.

"Is her hair not flame?" Kula went on. "Does she not speak of many past lives?"

Lobsang Drom hardened his eyes. "I refuse to accept this."

"But we must go to the Bunji Lama and prove it or disprove it ourselves. The Master of Sinanju would not lie."

Chiun cast a warning glance in Remo's direction, then came to his feet like a pillar of blue smoke.

"There is one who can convince you," he said firmly.

"How?" said Lobsang.

"The old Bunji Lama. We will consult him."

All eyes went to the closed steamer trunk, including Remo's.

Chiun waved toward it, saying, "Remo, you will have the honor of opening the trunk."

"Pass," said Remo, making a face.

They looked at him as if he had spoken a filthy word.

"It is a great honor," Chiun chided.

"All right, all right." Remo walked over to the trunk. It was not locked. The brass clasps opened easily enough. Remo forced the two halves apart and stepped back from what was revealed with sudden haste.

It was not the sight of the thing in the trunk that caused him to step back. It was the smell. The interior of the trunk was lined with salt to retard decomposition and hold the odor of decay inside.

For the trunk contained a mummy. Seated in a lotus position, hands cupped in a lap that was covered by a faded and moth-eaten robe of gold, the Bunji Lama wore lichens and mold where his face should be. His eyes were black pits, and his teeth were exposed between lips that had long ago dried and withered. In his hands lay a bronze object that might have been a very ornate dumbbell.

"Looks like a midget," Remo said.

"The Bunji Lama was not yet fifteen when he dropped that body."

Remo made a face. "Don't you people believe in a proper burial?"

Lobsang Drom said, "When a Tibetan dies, he is given sky burial. The ragyabas take the corpse to a proper place, and after its bones have been picked clean by vultures, they are interred."

"Must save a lot of space down at the of boneyard," Remo said dryly. "Not to mention entertaining the kiddies."

Lobsang Drom regarded him thinly. "How do you bury your dead?"

"They go into a wood box, and that goes into the ground."

"Your barley must taste like corpses," said Lobsang Drom.

Remo looked blank.

Kula said, "The Bunji Lama always sits in state until his next body is discovered, with his face turned to the south, which is the direction of long life. This is a form of respect for the old body, and there have been times when the old body will help point the way to the new."

"It is said that the body of the previous Dalai Lama turned his dead face to the northeast after he had been in state for ten days," offered Lobsang. "And it was to the northeast that the new Dalai Lama was discovered."

"Imagine that," said Remo.

"We will ask the Bunji Lama if the oracle has truly revealed his present body," announced Chiun.

The others came to their feet. Remo watched carefully.

Lobsang Drom faced the mummified remains of the forty-sixth Bunji Lama and said, "O, Light That Was. If the oracle reveals to us the Light That is Coming, as the Master of Sinanju has said, give us a sign, Thrice-Blessed One."

The old Bunji Lama sat mutely, the shifting colored light from the TV set making shadows crawl in his hollow eye sockets.

From the TV came the voice of Squirrelly Chicane, "My guru told me that I have a better chance of discovering my true mission in life after I turn sixty."

"Why is that, child?" asked Poopi Silverfish.

"Because sixty is the age when a woman becomes a crone."

"You mean like a witch?"

"That's just superstition. Throughout history the crone has been a symbol of female wisdom. Upon my sixtieth birthday, I will become wise."

"Honey," laughed Poopi, "if you look as good then as you do now, they're going to have to put a whole new picture next to the word 'crone' in the dictionaries!"

And covered by the laughter emanating from the TV, the Master of Sinanju surreptitiously swept a hand into the black steamer trunk and swept it out again.

The head of the Bunji Lama toppled off his dried stalk of a neck and rolled across the floor to come to a rest under the television set just as Poopi Silverfish said, "Squirrelly Chicane! Girl, I do believe you're gonna find your mission in life."

"Hark well," cried the Master of Sinanju, "the Bunji Lama has spoken."

"The Bunji Lama on the screen or the Bunji Lama whose head is on the floor?" asked Remo.

"Both," cried Chiun. "By rolling his head on the floor, the last Bunji Lama has revealed the long-hidden truth to the incredulous."

"Incredulous is right," said Remo.

Quivering from head to toe, Lobsang Drom faced Chiun, bowed once deeply and said, "Master of Sinanju, I should never have doubted you."

And the Master of Sinanju bowed back, the better to conceal his beaming face of triumph. Tibetans were so gullible.

"This is a great scam," Kula said reverently, brushing at a tear. "Perhaps the greatest of my life."

"No argument there," muttered Remo.

Chapter 6

The next morning Remo Williams awoke with the sun. He rolled off his sleeping mat, stretched his limbs and went to his walk-in clothes closet. The T-shirts were up on wooden hangers on one side, and his pants on the other. They all looked brand-new, which they were. When one of his T-shirts got dirty, Remo threw it away-if it was a white one. If it was black, he might save it for a rainy day. He only wore black or white T shirts. Plain. No dippy sayings or decorations.

His pants occupied the other half of the walk-in closet. Remo wore chinos almost exclusively with a preference for tan, gray or black, although the black ones tended to pick up lint and therefore, unlike the black T-shirts, were usually thrown out after a day's use.