"Shouldn't you aerate that tank?" Remo suggested.
"Nonsense. This tank replicates their natural environment. Aerators would disturb their natural life cycle."
As Barry Kranish talked, one fish gave up and sank back, upside down. He eventually floated back to the waterline, bobbing like a cork, belly-side-up.
"I think that one died," Remo prompted.
"Is death not part of the natural cycle of ecoreality?"
"Not if you're a fish that can't breathe the water," Remo said, looking to Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju pointed to a bird cage where a brownish-gray owl slept. His eyes were closed. His talons clutched a simple branch balanced between the cage walls.
Chiun clucked loudly. The owl opened balefully orblike yellow eyes. It struggled to shift positions on its perch, but could not move. It flapped its great wings in annoyance.
"Why is that bird wired to his perch?" Chiun inquired.
"I'm glad you asked that." Barry Kranish smiled. "This is the addled woodsy owl, one of our proudest achievements. Dirt First!! saved the last natural habitat of this magnificent creature. Let me show you what makes them special."
Kranish lifted a pair of wire cutters from an end table and, opening the cage door, reached in to snip the bird free.
The owl, beating its wings, flew from the cage. It made a frantic circle of the room. Chiun cast a wary eye ceilingward for dropping guano.
"He'll get tired soon," Barry promised.
"And then what?" Remo asked.
"He'll settle on this perch," Kranish added, taking a gnarled tree branch off the same polished table.
Presently the owl did slow down. Kranish stretched out one arm like a Navy semaphore signalman and the owl settled onto the branch amid a great fluttering of autumnal wings.
It worked its long talons for a moment or two before getting comfortable. And then, closing its eyes, the addled woodsy owl dropped off to sleep.
"This is the inspiring part," Kranish whispered.
As Remo and Chiun watched, the owl began to slip backward, eyes still closed.
The owl realized his problem too late. The round eyes flew open in wise surprise. Then the owl dropped backward off the perch to land on its tufted head with a loud bonk!
Remo rushed forward to pick the poor creature off the floor. It was out cold.
"What happened to it?" he wondered, face concerned.
"Oh, they do that all the time," Barry Kranish said airily. "That's the beauty of the addled woodsy owl. Check out the claws."
Remo did. He was no bird expert, but Chiun, leaning over worriedly, proclaimed the problem.
"It does not possess a back claw."
"Precisely," Kranish said with enthusiasm. "Addled owls are mutants. They lack the rear balancing claw, which is why they're always falling off their perches. There are only twenty-eight of them in the whole world, one here. The other twenty-seven are in Oregon, happily falling out of the trees and waking up in confusion. That's why they're called addled."
"This one does not look happy," Chiun pointed out. "Confused, yes. But not happy."
Kranish accepted the limp owl from Remo. "That's because they haven't fully acclimated themselves to their adaptation," he explained. "We think they are the next stage in owl evolution, designed to perch on something other than tree branches. We haven't figured out what yet, but we're committed to preserving them until the owls work it out among themselves."
"Did it ever cross your mind that these might simply be deformed owls?" Remo wondered as, humming, Kranish swiftly rewired the owl to his cage perch. When he was done, it hung upside down.
"That's a very unprogressive attitude you got there," Barry Kranish said disapprovingly.
"Sorry," Remo said contritely. "I really want to join Dirt First!! I'm Remo. This is Chiun. Where are the others?"
"Off doing the good work. I see you've come dressed for war."
"War?" Chiun squeaked.
"We are ecowarriors. The first politically pure vanguard that will sweep the earth clear of all unprogressive elements. When we're done, the global ecosystem will be safe for all life. We will happily coexist, man and monkey, cobra and weasel."
"I'm all for saving the weasels," Remo said with a poker face. "Where do I sign up?"
"In my office. Come, come. But watch your step."
"I see the guano," Remo said.
"I meant the cockroaches. They're rare Venezuelan bull roaches. We had a nest of them shipped in so visitors could appreciate their raw brute beauty."
Remo and Chiun stepped with care. A cockroach that looked like a cross between a very large beetle and a midget armadillo scuttled out of a crevice and went up the side of a fish tank with electrifying speed. As they watched in horror, it reached tiny forelegs into the water and dragged out a squirming fingerling.
Holding it above its waving feelers, it scuttled back for its lair.
Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.
"I will follow," Chiun whispered.
Remo nodded. He went through the door with Kranish.
The Master of Sinanju intercepted the cockroach and crushed it under a white sandal. Pinching the struggling fish between his nails, he returned it to its tank, where it resumed swimming happily.
Wearing a pleased smile, Chiun glided to the closing door.
Inside, the office was paneled in cherrywood. The smell was less rank in here, largely due to the open bay window.
Remo and Chiun gravitated to that window, making a concerted effort to breathe only outside air.
"As I was telling your friend here," Kranish relayed to Chiun, "in order to join Dirt First!! you must sign a release absolving the organization of culpability in any activities you undertake on our behalf."
"Why is that?" Remo wanted to know.
"So if you're arrested or sued, the organization can go on unimpeded," Kranish told him.
"Sounds like you don't place high value on your recruits," Remo muttered, looking at the release form.
Chiun accepted his upside down and made a pretense of reading it. He frowned in mock concentration.
"Listen," Kranish said, "Dirt First is about the environment. It is not about people. People are the disease, not the cure. If you join us, you must sublimate your identity to the group ethos."
Remo looked blank. "Ethos?"
"In Dirt We Trust!" Barry Kranish said sternly.
"In dirt . . . T"
"Surely you understand dirt. You're smeared with it. Are you ready to undertake the initiation?"
"What's it involve?" Remo asked suspiciously.
"Oh, not much. You take a little swim and commune with a few of nature's rare creatures. After that you imbibe a natural beverage that purges the system."
"Doesn't sound too bad," Remo said slowly.
"Spoken like a gullible white," Chiun hissed.
"What'd he say?" Barry Kranish asked.
"He said, 'Let's get it over with.' "
"Excellent. Come this way, please."
Barry Kranish led them back out to the reception area, where a bull cockroach was silently fishing at another tank.
Chiun brushed it in passing. It plopped into the water, where its weight carried it to the gravel bottom. The hungry fish began to bite off its waving legs.
Passing through a paneled door, they descended a flight of steps to a cool basement area lit by fluorescent lights set in long ceiling tubes. The lights were reflected in a long Olympic-size indoor pool. The water reflections shimmied and shook at the vibrations of their approach. Or Barry Kranish's approach, inasmuch as Remo and Chiun sent out no more vibration than a legless bull cockroach.
Remo looked onto the pool. It was not the cleanest water he had ever seen. At the other end, he detected sinuous needlelike shapes swimming in languorous circles.
"Cockroaches?" Remo asked doubtfully.