The Master of Sinanju pointed to a ring of stones at the foot of the hillock. A rusting bucket sat beside it.
"And over there," he added, "is their well. They are burying their dead uphill of their drinking water. In two months, it is going to taste like rancid duck. Have they no brains?"
"If they had," Remo said, "they wouldn't be eating bugs."
The ceremony, such as it was, was hastily concluded.
Someone could be heard asking, "Shouldn't we have waited for the media to set up their cameras?"
The man in the warbonnet-who Remo took to be Theodore Soars-With-Eagles-replied, "No. It will be better that they record my predictions for the endangered American people than the sight of our dead brethren. For if the federal government does not act soon, the dead will be beyond counting."
"What if they don't act?"
"They will act because the destruction of the ozone layer that is causing this will force them to act."
"They didn't act for acid rain."
"Or global warming."
"Or AIDS," someone else said.
"They will act here because it is not innocent trees, or deer, or persons who practice simple alternate lifestyles who are threatened, but the very ones who hold power in our corrupt society. For all know that the depletion of the ozone layer lets down carcinogenic ultraviolet rays, killing those who are cursed by being born light of skin. This is the first Caucasian-specific disaster in human history. The white man cannot wish this away."
Chiun frowned. "I do not understand a single word that man has said, Remo."
"Basically, he's doing a Chicken Little."
Chiun looked blank.
"He's claiming that the sky is falling," Remo explained.
"Is this true, Remo?" Chiun asked. "Will only whites succumb to this threat?"
"Only if they eat bugs. Come on, let's start looking around."
They started down from the hillside just as the first wave of press began setting up their cameras in front of a wooden dais evidently set up for Theodore SoarsWith-Eagles's press conference.
"Let's try to avoid these guys," Remo whispered.
"How? There are so many."
"Let's at least try," said Remo. "Remember our last assignment, where we were up to our hip pockets in television anchormen? Smith is still trying to explain the network casualties to the President."
"It was not our fault so many died."
"Maybe not, but half these guys have your description memorized."
They worked their way around and came upon a malodorous slit trench filled almost to overflowing with yellowish offal.
Chiun peered inward. His nose wrinkled up.
"How can they live in such filth? They do not even bury the waste of their miserable bodies."
"Since they eat only bugs, I'm surprised there is any waste. Boy, does it smell bad in there."
"What can one expect of dead bugs that have passed through the bodies of idiots?"
They leapt over the trench and continued on to a bivouac area where preparations for a full-scale press conference were under way.
A food-service truck was in operation, manned by two men in cook's whites.
"Come get your lobster salad sandwiches here," one cried. "We have lobster salad sandwiches and lobster salad bowls. Tastes just like thunderbug. All the taste and no risk to your health."
The food-service truck was immediately surrounded. Money changed hands and sandwiches were grabbed by eager hands.
Some members of the press, already unable to get close to the truck, held up remotes here and there.
"You know, it's strange knowing we won't run into Cheeta Ching or a Don Cooder out here," Remo remarked.
Chiun sniffed and said nothing. Cheeta Ching remained a sore subject with him. Don Cooder was one of the network anchor casualties and a thorn in their side for years, until they had pulverized him.
A reporter they recognized as Nightmirror correspondent Ned Doppler was speaking into a hand mike and was staring into a minicam.
"Here in the rugged wilderness of Mendocino County, California, a new breed of American environmentalists are taking a stand against the despoiling of nature. PAPA. People Against Protein Assassins. They don't eat meat or dairy products. Only pure, natural food enters their systems. Only the purest water, only foods harvested in their natural habitat. Here, in one of the richest breeding grounds of the thunderbug, a valiant band, ignoring the naysayers, are deep in an experiment more monumental than the much-maligned Biosphere 2 experiment. They are the vanguard, eating a natural insect, becoming human insectivores in their quest for purity and oneness with nature."
"Stay low, Little Father," warned Remo. "This guy knows you on sight."
Ned Doppler, his wealth of hair squatting on his head like some steroid-intoxicated fur, seemed oblivious to everything but his lines, which he was reading off cue cards.
"Crap," said Remo. They moved on.
Another live remote was in progress not much further along. Remo recognized the boyish-looking newsman as Tim Macaw, who anchored the MBC evening news.
"The Thunderbug. Miracle Food or Menace? Who is to know? Who can know? The debate is already raging here in this mountain fastness between the legions of PAPA and the hordes unleashed by the Food and Drug Administration. Will right triumph? Will good be rewarded? Will the PAPA continue to nourish their bodies with Ingraticus Avalonicusor . . . or will we ever know? Can we ever know? Can we ever really, really, really, ever know anything?"
"Not if we listen to dickheads like you," Remo yelled in a loud voice.
A producer called, "Cut!"
Macaw looked around angrily. "What jerk ruined my standup?"
But Remo and Chiun were no longer in sight. They had drifted on.
It was like that for the next five hundred yards. Reporters talking into microphones, giving opinions without foundation, speculating without sources, and clawing for a piney background that would make it seem as if they and only they had the exclusive story.
It was impossible to get close to the podium where Theodore Soars-With-Eagles and his adherents were about to appear, unless Remo and Chiun wanted to insinuate themselves into a growing circle of media that resembled a fast-forming mold ring, which they could, and risk having their faces televised nationally, which they preferred to avoid.
"Those big tents over to the south must be the Feds," Remo whispered. "Let's try them."
"I do not see the bugs everyone speaks of," said Chiun, examining the bottom of one sandal. "What do they look like?"
"Search me. All I know is that they're pretty small."
Chiun stooped, brushing the dried-out grass with his long fingernails. "I see many bugs. Which are which?"
"All bugs look alike to me. Just don't eat any, okay?"
Chiun straightened. "Remo! I would no sooner eat a bug than I would go naked in public."
"Do me a favor. Don't do either."
On the other side of a stand of ponderosa pine that seemed to form a natural barrier, they found the big army-style tents.
"Damn!" said Remo. "The media's all over this place too."
"Why do you not beat them, as did the adherents of the last President?" wondered Chiun. "He would simply revile them before large crowds, and his followers would descend on the Philistines with hard sticks."
"Pass," said Remo. He was looking around, thinking that this assignment, already a pain, was fast becoming a logistical nightmare. He was about to suggest they withdraw to the nearest hotel and wait for the feeding frenzy to subside when someone with a mircrophone suddenly shouted, "Hey! Isn't that Twin Peaks?"
"You mean Capital Hills."