"I got you time to make a movie, and I'm lining up a great deal for you."
"Big deal. I've got to do double shows."
"So what? It'll be easy for you. You're a quick study."
"And what is this other poop?" asked Rex. "This three-minute spot?"
"That's something very important," said Wanda. "Today, your show's going to be cut by three minutes. After the commercials, you get three minutes to read a message to the audience."
"What message? What do I want to say to a lot of housewives?"
Wanda dug into a straw handbag that looked as if it had been recycled from a Mexican family's sandals.
"You just read this."
She handed Rad Rex a sheet of paper. He looked at it quickly. "What is this crap?"
"The crap you're going to read."
"In a pig's poopoo, I am. It doesn't make any sense."
"Just do it. Consider it a favor."
"For you? Hah!"
"For Mr. Gordons."
Rad Rex looked at Wanda's bland eyes again, then down at the paper, scanning it rapidly, committing the phrases to memory.
Remo sat sprawled in the armchair in their motel room in Burwell, Nebraska.
His legs were stretched out in front of him, and he was keeping time with his big toes to the beat of an invisible drummer. He was bored. To the depth and breadth of his soul, he was bored. Bored, bored, bored.
Already that morning, he had done his finger stands; he had practiced the floater stroke and had not dislocated a shoulder, although he would have almost been glad to, if only to relieve the monotony. He had done his breathing exercises, pulling his respiration down to two breaths a minute. He had worked on his pulse, lowering it to twenty-four and raising it to ninety-six. In his mind, he had done his roadwork, running through a virgin forest in the great Northwest, slipping up quietly on animals, racing with them, usually winning. He had come out of it after he had run into a great doe, a giant female deer, and had begun to think the beast was attractive. That was when he realized how bored he was.
Even his toes were bored.
Seven days in this town would bore anyone. Strange, it never seemed to bore the people who lived in these kind of towns. Maybe it was because they knew more about their towns than he did. One of the perils of being an outsider. Remo Williams, perpetual outsider. Outside everybody. Outside everyplace. No family, no home, no goals.
Strike that. He did have family. It sat in front of him now on the floor, wearing a ceremonial blue afternoon robe, eyes riveted to the television set where Dr. Whitlow Wyatt was revealing to Mr. Brace Riggs that her husband Elmore's disease was fatal. However, Dr. Wyatt had heard of a serum. A very rare serum, prepared in the depths of the equatorial jungle by natives from an herb which they grew secretly. But the serum was unavailable to Western medicine. "We cannot get any?" asked Mrs. Riggs, who loved her husband, even if she had for fourteen years, been having an affair with the Episcopalian priest in town, Father Daniel Bennington. But Dr. Wyatt assured her that there was a chance-a slim chance. If Dr. Wyatt himself went and confronted the headhunting Jivaro Indians, perhaps with an appeal to a greater morality he could coax from them some of the serum.
"You would go?" said Mrs. Riggs.
"I would go," said Dr. Wyatt.
"Go," said Remo, "And keep going."
The organ music came up and over, and the program faded.
Chiun wheeled on Remo. "See what you did?"
"What did I do?"
"They made this show too short. It is three minutes too short."
"I didn't have anything to…"
"Shhh," said Chiun as an announcer came on screen.
"In just a moment, Rad Rex-the star of 'As the Planet Revolves'-will have a special word for special members of our viewing audience. But first these messages."
"You are lucky, Remo," said Chiun.
"Well, as long as I'm lucky, try this. We're leaving. We're going back to get Smith out of that room. No more just sitting here going out of our minds."
"And Mr. Gordons?"
"Screw Mr. Gordons. I'm not going to spend my life hiding while you put into motion some hundred-year program for dealing with him. We'll go find him."
"How like a child," said Chiun. "To choose an obvious guaranteed catastrophe because he is too bored to wait for a better moment." He tried to mimic Remo's American accent, lowering his voice so he sounded like a flute trying to play bass. "Don't matter what happens, pard. Just as long as it happens fast."
"Are you done with the impersonations, Little Father?" said Remo.
"Yeah, Stumpy," said Chiun again in the deep voice, imitating a line from a John Wayne movie.
Since Remo was bigger than Chiun by a foot and heavier by more than fifty pounds, this made him laugh despite his annoyance.
"Stop that cackling," ordered Chiun suddenly. He turned his attention back to the television where Rad Rex's face appeared in closeup. He still wore his doctor's robes. His face, Remo thought, looked glum, not like the healthy smile he wore on that autographed photo of him that Chiun had terrorized the Mafia into providing a few years earlier.
Rex began to talk slowly.
"Friends, it is a pleasure to let you know that I will continue in the role of Dr. Whitlow Wyatt on 'As the Planet Revolves.' " He paused.
"Hooray," Chiun cheered.
"Silence," said Remo.
"Coming into the homes of so many of you every day has been the biggest thrill of my life," Rex said, "and I look forward to continuing with you, trying to bring you good stories about real people caught in the real problems of real life.
"Some people like to sneer at our daytime dramas, to call them foolish and insignificant. But I know better. I know the lives these stories have touched and brightened.
"And even if my own faith were in doubt, I would be reassured by the knowledge that out there, in television land, there is one who knows. Out there, there is a man of such wisdom and strength and humility and beauty and he approves of what we do here. It is to that person that these shows are directed, because it is from the knowledge of his support that I gain the strength to go on.
"I am now going to Hollywood for a brief period. Some of you may have heard that I may soon make a film, but I want you all to know that 'As the Planet Revolves' will continue.
"So now I am off to Hollywood. And I hope that there I will have the opportunity to meet in person the man I have heard so much about, the man who understands what it is I do, and that I will have the chance to sit at his feet and soak in his wisdom."
Rad Rex looked up and with a small smile directly into the camera, he said: "Beloved Master, I wait for you in Hollywood."
His face faded, and there were a few seconds of pause before the commercials came on again.
"That's it," said Chiun.
"That's what?" asked Remo.
"We are not staying in this room anymore. We are going to Hollywood."
"Why would we go to Hollywood?" asked Remo, "Assuming for a moment, inaccurately, that we were actually going to Hollywood."
"Because Rad Rex is waiting there for me."
"You think that message was directed to you?"
"You heard it. He said wisdom, strength, humility and beauty. Who else do you know that he could have been talking about?"
"He was probably talking about his hairdresser."
"He was speaking to me," said Chiun, rising to his feet so smoothly that the robe seemed almost not to stir. "I will leave you to make the arrangements for our trip to Hollywood. I will hold you personally responsible if we should fail to meet Rad Rex for any reason. I must go and pack."
Chiun swept from the room, a half-second before the trail of his robe caught up with him. Remo saw the bedroom door close behind Chiun and sank even deeper into his chair.
"Chiun," he yelled.
"That is my name," piped back the voice from the other room.