"That'd almost be worth it just to get someone in that dump of a village to do an honest day's work," Remo said.
The eyes of Huitzilopochtli followed them as they headed for the main square.
The driving soon became impossible. Remo ditched his car on a rutted side street. The two men continued on foot.
Like a full moon at midnight, the Huitzilopochtli statue seemed to always be in the sky at their shoulder as they walked along the sidewalk.
"Let's hope the Buffoon Aid benefit's inside somewhere," Remo said. "That statue's giving me the creeps."
They found a reed-thin woman on a street corner near the town square. Dressed in a big, filthy muumuu, she looked like a dirty stick draped with a circus tent.
The woman sat on the sidewalk cutting colored scraps of paper into clumsy flower shapes. As she worked her scissors, the white tip of her tongue jutted from between her pale lips. A cobblestone pried up from a hole in the street kept her paper flowers from blowing away.
As they stopped before the squatting woman, Chiun's face took on a glint of quiet fascination. "Excuse me, ma'am," Remo said.
The scissors paused in midsnip.
"'Ma'am?'" Lorraine Wintnabber sneered up at him. "What kind of patriarchal cave did you crawl out of?"
"The kind with liquid Tide and bars of Dial that aren't dehydrated from nonuse," Remo replied.
"Soap pollutes our precious waterways," Lorraine said. She resumed clipping away.
"Since you're the first noncartoon person I've seen with actual stink lines floating off them, my vote's for sudsing up the mighty Mississip," Remo said. "Now, while my nose is still attached, you mind telling me where that big stand-up comic show is being held?"
The woman was still deeply involved in her work. She hadn't even looked up while Remo spoke. "That way," she snarled.
Lorraine waved to a big auditorium across the street from Barkley's city hall. Remo saw HTB vans parked out front, their rooftop satellite dishes aimed skyward. The legend "An AIC News-Wallenberg Company" was stenciled in small print on the side panels of each of the vans.
"Now, beat it," she said. "I've got eight hundred of these things to do by the day after tomorrow and I've only got twelve done so far."
She finished clipping another ragged flower. With great care she delivered it to the pile of finished ones, clapping the muddy cobblestone back in place.
"This may be none of my business, Dirty Harriet, but wouldn't it be easier if you did that inside?" Remo asked.
"It's too dark," Lorraine said, her eyes on her scissors.
"Turn on the lights."
"Electricity is an invention of the military-industrial complex designed to keep the masses weak and pliable by making them stay up late watching Johnny Carson."
This time when Chiun squeezed Remo's arm, there was a look of questioning joy on the old man's face. He was watching Lorraine intently.
"Can it be?" the Master of Sinanju whispered under his breath to his pupil.
Something else down the block caught the old man's eye. With sudden glee he bounded a few yards away.
Brow furrowed, Remo tracked his teacher. The wizened Korean stopped near a college-age man. The Barkley University student was passing out colored fliers to pedestrians. Remo noted that they were printed in the same colors as those the woman at his feet was cutting.
"In case you didn't hear out on Neptune, Johnny Carson retired years ago," Remo said to the seated woman. "Thanks for the directions."
He started to leave, but Chiun was hurrying back toward him, dragging the pamphlet-hawking student in his wake. The old man's face was rhapsodic.
"I have found another one!" Chiun squealed.
"Another what?" Remo scowled. "And stop pointing that thing at me."
He leaned back from the kid the Master of Sinanju held before him. The young man had a black sweatshirt, scraggly goatee and a shaved head.
"You wanna know the truth behind all those cattle mutilations?" the college student confided to Remo. "Think genetically engineered supercows. It's the secret Ronald McDonald doesn't want you to find out about."
He stuffed a photocopied flier into Remo's hand.
On the bright pink paper several stick-figure dead cows formed a bovine border around illegible text. "Next time you might want to write your manifesto after they let you out of the straitjacket," Remo suggested. He crumpled the paper and tossed it over his shoulder.
"Litterbug!" snarled the woman snipping out the papers. She snatched up the flier and began carving it up.
"Thought I had an easy target," Remo said. "I was aiming for your mouth. What's up?" he asked Chiun.
"Do you not see?" the old man asked, delighted. He held out his hands in proud presentation. "This, Remo, is a village idiot. It is a wonderful old English tradition."
"There's nothing wonderful about the English, Grampa," Lorraine insisted as she worked. "Just a bunch of dead white males spreading syphilis and the language of conquerors."
"Lady, I got news for you," Remo said. "I've been almost everywhere there is to go on this benighted rock, and the most civilized places by far are the ones where they speak English. Furthermore, even a dead guy would jump out the window before spreading syphilis to you."
The sidewalk-squatting woman didn't even hear the last of what he said. At his use of the demeaning and sexist term lady, she immediately tried to stick the blunt end of her childproof scissors into Remo's leg.
"See?" Chiun said, ecstatic. "She is another village idiot. And there!" He pointed out to the road. "There are two more!"
Two flabby middle-aged men in short shorts and too-tight tanktops were just pedaling past on a bicycle built for two.
Chiun clasped his hands together with giddy glee. "Why did you not tell me this was a training ground for village idiots, Remo?" Chiun asked. "Or perhaps it is a national secret. When the time is right, wave after wave of idiots will be dispatched from this province to amuse and delight the citizenry of this land. Look!" he squealed.
Wrinkled face rapturous, he flounced down the street.
"Yeah," Remo agreed as the Master of Sinanju began joyfully stalking a placard-wearing vegan. "And that time comes every spring at Barkley U graduation. Will you knock it off?" he snapped down at the sidewalk.
Lorraine was still trying to jab him with her scissors. When he walked off, she gave up and instead stuck the nearby college kid in the calf. Yelping in pain, the young man promptly dropped all his fliers. As he rubbed the bruise the blunt scissors had made, Lorraine swept all of the colored papers between her folded knees.
"Go litter on someone else's planet," she accused.
Ever on the lookout to do her part to save Mother Earth, she began recycling the college student's discarded trash into more respectable, environmentally conscious daisies.
Chapter 10
Boris Feyodov was trotting down the broad front steps of Barkley's city hall when the voice called out to him.
"General. I mean, Supreme Military- Hey, you!"
Feyodov considered ignoring the man altogether. With great reluctance, he paused in midstride. He turned.
Gary Jenfeld was huffing down the staircase, a container of Jane Funday Sundae Ice Cream in his hand.
"I am already late," the Russian said impatiently. Feyodov was not wearing his Red Army uniform. He had agreed to that ridiculous term only on the condition that he not have to march around the street in it.
"Yeah, I know," Gary said. "You gotta get that special part. I didn't want to keep you, but-" he cast a glance back up the steps "-it's about Zen."
The look on Feyodov's face made clear his opinion of Gary's partner in the ice cream business. "I'm not allowed to tell you some of what's really going on here," Gary whispered conspiratorially.