Horton Droney III gave the studio audience, and the camera, an arched eyebrow look. The audience howled with laughter. A tomato splashed at the feet of Princess Sinanchu, who recoiled.
"No, not yet," Horton Droney told his audience reprovingly. "I'll tell you when to start throwing things."
"I can prove my claim," Shane Billiken insisted.
"I know, I know," Horton Droney said. "You've had language experts from all over the world listen to her, and they all agree that she's speaking in an unknown tongue."
"Exactly right."
"And we all know how infallible those ivory-tower geniuses are. I mean, if I wanted to run a scam like this, all I'd have to do is say, 'Yabbba-dabbo doo' a few times and I'd have them scratching their pointy little heads too."
"Why don't we let the audience judge for themselves?"
"Shoot."
Shane Billiken turned to the woman he called Princess Sinanchu and squeezed her hand hard. She began speaking in rapid bursts.
"Mola re Sinanchu. A gosa du Sinanchu. Ponver dreu du Sinanchu."
"She says that she is Princess Sinanchu," Shane Billiken said carefully, "and she wants to warn us that we're letting our technology destroy us. We should eat more organic foods like cheese, clean up our water and our air, or the calamity that befell her civilization will fall upon ours."
"She said all that, eh?"
"That's correct."
"Then how come she said her name three times and you repeated it only once?" Horton Droney said savagely.
"I gave you the loose translation."
"And if this language is unknown to modern world, how come you speak it? Huh? Answer me that."
"Because in a previous life I was her husband."
"Oh, this is such crap." Horton Droney turned to the audience. "I say it's crap. What do you say?"
"It's crap!" yelled the studio audience. Security guards moved in when some in the front row started to rush the stage.
"They say it's crap," accused Horton Droney, turning to Princess Sinanchu. "And I'm going to prove it." He was shouting now, shouting abuse and invective in the frightened face of Princess Sinanchu.
"Come on, admit it. You're a fraud. This is an act. Who are you really? Some cheap stripper he picked up in a saloon? I'll bet right now there's someone in our television audience looking at you and saying, 'I know her. I went to high school with the little trollop.' Come on, 'fess up, before someone else blows the whistle."
"Dakka, qi Drue Sinanchu," said Princess Sinanchu.
"We know your freaking stage name, you smarmy fake. What we want is the truth. Who are you? How much is he paying you to work this little scam? Huh? Come on, admit it."
Horton Droney was spitting words in her face with relentless violence. His face was turning red. The studio audience was a mob.
"Shake it out of her, Hort," they yelled. "Make the bitch talk."
Horton Droney grabbed Princess Sinanchu by the hair and yanked her out of her seat.
"I know how to prove she's a fraud," he shouted, wrestling her to the front of the stage. "An old-fashioned spanking!"
Princess Sinanchu made a sound like a spitting cat and reached under her skirt. Her hand flashed up and Horton Droney suddenly backed away from her. He twisted on his feet until his knees started buckling. His mouth opened in a grimace. An ornate bone handle jutted from his chest.
He gripped it in both hands, and then, his face darkening even as his grimace widened, he fell on his face.
A "Technical Difficulties" sign was beamed into millions of homes across the nation.
"Enough," Chiun said abruptly, releasing Remo's numb lips. He arose and shut off the TV. "We are going to Moo."
"I realize television may have sunk to new depths here, Little Father," Remo protested. "But I think we can find some better way to entertain ourselves than by resorting to animal impressions."
"There is no time to explain," Chiun said, flouncing from the room like a fussy hen. "Pack."
"Pack? Why?"
"Because we are going to Moo."
Remo, seeing from the Master of Sinanju's body language that he meant business, shrugged and said, "I'd better inform Smith, then." He picked up the telephone and dialed the nonemergency number that connected him with CURE, the supersecret government organization for which he worked. A recorded message told him he had reached the Miami Beach Betterment League and that, at the sound of the beep, the caller had exactly thirty seconds to leave a message.
Remo waited for the beep and then, letting out his breath, let out with it a rapid-fire stream of words. "Smitty. Remo. Chiun and I are going to moo. I don't know what exactly that means, but it involves travel, and from Chiun's look, it's serious. I'd explain, but I don't know any more than that, and besides, I have a hunch the explanation would take longer than thirty seconds. Next time spring for a longer tape. 'Bye."
Remo hung up with three seconds to spare and called into the other room:
"Srnitty's taken care of."
"Good," called Chiun. "Are you packed?"
"One thing at a time," Remo grumbled, starting for his room. He stopped abruptly and ducked back into Chiun's room.
"Give me one good reason why I should," Remo demanded.
"I will tell you on the way."
"No, I think I deserve a straight answer right now." Remo folded his arms. "And if I don't get one, I'm not going to quack, bark, grunt, or whinny. Never mind moo."
Chiun stopped his packing. He straightened up from laying a traveling kimono in a bright red lacquer trunk with brass handles. His clear hazel eyes narrowed craftily.
"Because," the Master of Sinanju said carefully, "the women go bare-breasted."
Remo blinked as the significance of the Master of Sinanju's words sank in. He did not understand this moo business. He did not understand how it connected with this sudden urge to pack. Breasts, he understood. When Harold Smith had first subjectgd him to a battery of psychological tests before turning him over to Chiun, Remo had passed most of the tests handily. Except one. The Rorschach test. Smith laid down one inkblot and Remo looked at it briefly and pronounced it a pair of female breasts. That was the answer he gave for nine out of nine inkblots. Sometimes he saw only one breast. Once he saw three. When the worried look on Smith's parsimonious face made Remo fear he was about to be dumped into the grave bearing his name but which actually contained a nameless derelict, Remo announced that the tenth and final inkblot was an accurate depiction of the Indian subcontinent-even though it looked like the most colossal set of boobs he had ever seen.
Remo shook his head suddenly and straightened out of his leaning slouch against the doorjamb.
"Well, don't just stand there," he said. "Keep packing. I'll call a cab."
Chapter 4
The doctor at New York Hospital wanted to say that Horton Droney III would not, could not, under any imaginable circumstances, see visitors.
Instead, a blood-curdling scream erupted in the room. It wasn't coming from the tiny Oriental gentleman in the colorful native costume. His companion, the one with the deadest eyes Dr. Alan Dooley had seen since medical school, stood tight-lipped. He was not the author of the blood-curdling scream either.
It might have been Nurse Bottomsly. Her mouth was open. But her throat wasn't pulsating the way people do when they scream. She looked more shocked than horrified. And she was looking directly at him.
It was then that Dr. Dooley noticed that it was he himself who had authored the mysterious scream. Imagine that. He was screaming and he hadn't even noticed. Before his fear-frozen brain synapses could begin the process of wondering why he was screaming, the answer shot up his arm, spread to the other arm, down both legs, up his screaming skull, and, most painfully, to his testicles.