Warren Murphy: The Arms of Kali

"I'm going to be renegotiating some labor contracts pretty soon," Baynes said. "How often does a person have to eat, would you say? I'm really interested."

"Once a week. It depends on how one stores one's food," Chiun said.

"Wonderful. Let me write that down. You're not making this up?" Baynes was scribbling frantically on a white pad with a gold pen.

"He's not talking about the same thing as you," said Remo.

"I don't care," Baynes said. "The concept is perfect. I just have to turn it into more human terms."

"Such as?" Remo asked.

"Once-a-week eating is good for people. For good people. And we want to make everybody into good people."

"It doesn't work for everybody," Remo said, and took the pad from Baynes's hand. Baynes lunged for it but Remo had it in the wastebasket before Baynes could reach it.

"That's an assault," Baynes said. "You, a federal employee. You have assaulted an officer of a corporation."

"That wasn't an assault," Remo said.

"That is a legal assault," said Baynes, sitting down in a formidably dark cherrywood chair from which he could, if he wished, menace his growing empire.

Remo took the arm of the chair and the arm of A. H. Baynes and blended them somewhat. Baynes wanted to scream but the white man's other hand was on his spinal column and all that came out was a barely audible peep from a desperately quivering tonsil.

Baynes could not move his right arm. He did not even dare to look at it. The pain told him it would be an ugly sight.

Tears came to his eyes.

"Now, that," Remo said, "is an assault. Can you see the difference? The other thing with the pad was kind of a getting-something-out-of-the-way, not an assault. If you understand the difference, nod."

Baynes nodded.

"Would you like the pain to end?" Remo asked. Baynes nodded, very sincerely.

Remo adjusted the spinal column where the pain-controlling nerves were. He did not know their names but he knew they were there. Baynes would not feel pain anymore.

"I can't move my arm," Baynes said.

"You're not supposed to," Remo said.

"Oh," said Baynes. "I suppose that's your leverage for getting me to talk."

"You got it," Remo said. "People are getting killed on your airline."

"No, they're not. That is wrong. That is a misperception and we have responded to that before," Baynes said.

"About a hundred people, all of them ticket-holders on just Folks, have been strangled."

"Unfortunate, but not on our airline, and we'll sue anyone who suggests such a thing," Baynes said. "Any one."

"I'm saying it," said Remo, making an obvious move toward the other arm, the one not yet blended with the cherrywood.

"Saying it among ourselves is not slander," Baynes said quickly. "We're just brainstorming, right?"

"Right. Why do you say they're not being killed on your airline?"

"Because they get killed after they get off our airline," Baynes said. "Not on it. After it."

"Why do you think somebody picked just Folks to do this to?" Remo asked.

"What I hear is that they're cheap robberies. And we have the cheap consumer fares," Baynes said.

"What's that mean?"

"Lowest fares in the business. People Express took fares as low as they could really go. So we had to do something else to take them even lower. We're a semischeduled airline."

"What's semischeduled?" Remo asked.

"We take off after your check clears," Baynes said. "We also don't waste a lot of capital overtraining pilots."

"How do you train your pilots?" Remo asked.

"All Just Folks pilots have a working knowledge of the aircraft they fly. That doesn't have to mean countless hours of wasting fuel in the sky."

"You mean your pilots have never flown until they fly a just Folks plane?"

"Not so. Let me clear that up. They most certainly do fly. They have to fly to get their pilot's licenses.They just don't have to fly those big planes that use so much fuel."

"What do they fly?" Remo asked.

"We have the most advanced powered hang-gliders in the business. We have in-air training for our pilots."

"So you think it's the low fares that attract these robbers and killers to your semischeduled airline?" Remo asked.

"Exactly. May I have my arm back now?"

"What else do you know?"

"Our advertising department says there's no way we can capitalize on the fact that our fares are so low that even small-time killers fly us. They said an advertising appeal to hoodlums wouldn't help our ticket sales."

Chiun nodded. "Hoodlums. Killing for pennies. The horror of it. Remo, I should have brought my petition with me."

Remo ignored him. "Would any of your people recognize any of the killers? Maybe they fly frequently."

"We wouldn't recognize our own employees," Baynes said. "This is a semischeduled airline. We don't go taking off on the button like Delta. You're not talking a Delta crew when you're talking Just Folks. We are semischeduled. We have to factor in some element of crew turnover."

"What do you mean, crew turnover?" Remo snapped. "In the course of a whole year someone had to notice something."

"What year? Who's been at just Folks a year? You're a senior member of our line if you can find the men's bathroom," said Baynes. "My arm. Please."

"We are joining just Folks," Remo said.

"By all means. Would you please separate my arm from the chair?"

"I never learned how," Remo said.

"What?" gasped Baynes.

"I am a semischeduled assassin," Remo said. "By the way, what I did to your arm ... ?"

"Yes?"

"If you were to talk about this to somebody, I might just do it with your brain and a potato," Remo said.

"That's crude, " said Chiun in Korean. In English he told Baynes, "There are many things we do not understand in the world. My son's desire for secrecy is one of them. Please be as solicitous of his feelings as he is of yours. "

"You'll do to my brain what you just did to my arm," said Baynes. "Is that it?"

"See?" Chiun told Remo. "He understood, and without your being crude about it."

Baynes was thinking of how he would get his arm sawed free. Maybe he could walk around with a piece of cherrywood blended to his arm. He could live that way. Specially tailored suits could hide most of it.

Suddenly the hands that hardly seemed to move were at his arm again and he was free. He rubbed his arm. Nothing. It was slightly sore, but nothing was wrong. And the arm of the chair was just as it had always been. Had he been hypnotized? Had there been hidden straps holding him to the chair?

He thought he might have talked too much. He should have been tougher and just called the police. Maybe he would try it now, he thought.

The young white man seemed to know what Baynes was thinking because he took the airline president's gold pen and rubbed his finger very slowly over the clasp. First the gold shimmered under the fluorescent light as if it were waving, and then the metal melted on his desk, burning a smoking foul hole in the perfectly polished cherrywood.

"You're hired," Baynes announced. "Welcome aboard just Folks Airlines. We have several vice-presidencies open."

"I want to fly," Remo said. "I want to be on board."

Baynes stuck a finger straight up in the air. "Which way is that?"

"Up," said Remo.

"You're now a navigator on a semischeduled airline. "

"I want to move among the passengers," Remo said.

"We can make you a flight attendant."

"Sure," said Remo. "Both of us."

On the next just Folks flight from Denver to New Orleans, there was no coffee, tea, or milk. The two flight attendants just sat all the passengers down and watched them. There were no complaints. When one of the pilots asked for a glass of water, he was thrown back into the cockpit and told to wait until he got home.