Remo saw what the two meant an instant later. And it wasn't landscape.
She came without a mike or sound man or minicam. She didn't need them to break a path. Her chest looked big enough to knock down an advancing skirmish line. It bounced.
Remo had seen a lot of bouncing breasts in his time. Usually they bounced in tandem. These did not. One went up as the other was going down. Sometimes they collided in passing and caromed off one another.
It was clear the woman was not wearing a bra. She wasn't big on shaving her legs either. She wore khaki shorts that left her legs bare. Or as bare as the legs of a tarantula could be. They were that hairy.
And Remo had a deep suspicion that she dispensed with underarm deodorant too. The cool California air was becoming acrid.
The woman carried a stubby pencil and a frayed spiral notepad, so Remo took her to be a print reporter.
"Is anyone here not with the feds?" she bellowed:
The electronic press lifted their hands. Their eyes stayed on her chest.
"Not you idiots!" she snapped. "I know who you are. I'm looking for someone from PAPA."
The hands went down.
"Anyone here from PAPA?" she repeated.
Suddenly her eyes lighted on Remo and Chiun.
"Uh-oh," said Remo.
"Remo," Chiun said worriedly. "It is coming this way."
"I know it."
The woman bounced up, seemingly oblivious to the uppercuts her mammaries were trying to give her pointed chin. "You! Are you the People Against Protein Assassins?"
"No," said Remo. "Go away."
"You can't tell me to go away. I'm from the Boston Blade."
Remo groaned. It was worse than he thought. The Boston Blade was notorious for the political correctness of its reporters. Although they had another phrase for it: moral rectitude.
The woman marched up to Remo and came to a dead stop. Her breasts continued forward, stressing the thin fabric of her peasant blouse beyond reason. Through the gauzy stuff, her nipples showed as big as cow teats mounted on lopsided aureoles.
Remo and Chiun took a unified step backward.
"I'm Jane Goodwoman," the woman announced when her chest stopped rebounding. "And when I write things in my column, great Americans from Senator Ned Clancy to the Reverend Juniper Jackman pay attention. Sixteen column inches of my copy in tomorrow's Blade will have America's best and brightest politicians swarming all over this place."
Remo turned to Chiun and said, "Maybe we should just get rid of her now."
"You can't get rid of the press," Jane Goodwoman snapped, "and you know it. We're eternal, the permafrost of American society."
"That explains the cultural Ice Age," said Remo.
Jane Goodwoman narrowed her thin eyes. "So who are you two?"
Sighing, Remo dug out an ID card and lifted it to her face.
"Remo Cougar Mellencamp," he said in a bored voice. "With the Food and Drug Association."
"You mean 'Administration.' "
Remo pulled the card back real fast, palming it so it couldn't be read. "No, I mean Association."
"I understand it's Administration."
Remo decided to bluff his way through this bullshit conversation. "The new Administration changed the name. Claimed people got it confused with the executive branch. Guess they were right."
Jane Goodwoman's face lost its tension. "Oh, if the Administration says it's all right, then it's all right, right?"
"Right," said Remo. "Now we have work to do."
"Well, I'm here to help," said Jane Goodwoman, who was looking at Remo's pants zipper.
"By hauling every congressman and senator from the fifty states into this?"
"How else are we going to solve America's problems?"
"It is not a problem, according to Thrush Limburger," squeaked Chiun.
Jane Goodwoman blanched. She swayed. For a moment, she looked like she was about to faint or throw up, or possibly do both.
Remo's instinct was to reach out to prevent her from falling on her face. The thought of touching her repelled him. Then she leaned forward and her breasts popped out of her blouse and he realized her face was in no danger at all.
She hit the dirt with a mushy splat. Her pointed nose bent to the left, but only because it struck a stone.
Remo called over to a crew of workmen pitching tents.
"Hey, we could use some help over here."
Their eyes went wide and their faces paled. "Did you say HELP?" one croaked.
"Not that kind of help," said Remo. "We need a tent pitched right here."
They came bearing rolled canvas, pegs, and tent poles and nervous twitches.
"Put it over her so she doesn't draw flies," Remo suggested.
The workmen noticed Jane Goodwoman's pallor. "Is-is she contagious?" one asked shakily.
"Only if you read her column with your brain turned off," said Remo. "Come on, Little Father."
They started making the rounds of tents. Signs were hung on all of them. Remo saw that the Department of the Interior, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration were on the job, among others.
"Is anybody in charge here?" Remo called into open tent flaps as he came to them.
"No, we're just trying to help," a voice from the first tent told him.
"Then why are you all hiding in your tents?"
"Are you crazy? There's a hole in the ozone right over our heads. We're waiting for the sunblock and aluminum umbrellas to arrive."
"And you are?"
"Environmental Protection Agency. We're here to see if the bug belongs on the endangered species list."
"And if it does?"
"America faces the hardest choice in its history-to protect the thunderbug or feed the starving millions of the world. It's a choice I wouldn't want to have to make."
"Amen," added a voice from the next tent. A sign in front said Federal Radon Testing Administration.
"That's probably why you get paid the big bucks," said Remo, rolling his eyes.
At the next tent, he was asked if he was the press. When he said no, the tent was zipped up in his face, and a whining voice complained, "How are we going to get our federal grant without press?"
Remo got similar answers at almost every tent.
"How do you know which of these people can help us and which cannot?" Chiun asked as they walked along.
"I'll know it when I hear it."
At last they came to one that was sealed. Remo looked for something to knock on and settled for slapping the tent flap hard.
A voice said, "Go away, I'm working in here."
"Bingo," said Remo.
Just then, one of the tent pitchers came over and said, "She's calling for you. Ms. Goodwoman is calling for you, sir."
"Let her call," said Remo.
"She says she has something to show you that will explain everything. I suggest you placate her. She's very powerful."
"Watch this tent," Remo told Chiun.
He followed the man to the newly erected tent and slipped in.
Jane Goodwoman was alone in the tent. It was dark.
Remo's eyes adjusted to the lack of light, got a good look, and decided that darkness was preferable.
"Okay, let's hear it," he said.
"I like you," said Jane Goodwoman in a suddenly husky voice.
"I'm politically incorrect. Honest Injun."
She came closer. "I like a challenge."
"Try mounting a giraffe."
Jane Goodwoman approached with the languorous sway of a net bag crammed with assorted misshapen muskmelons.
She reached behind Remo and zipped the tent flap closed.
"You had something to show me," Remo reminded.
"And here they are!" said Jane Goodwoman, pulling down her blouse front. "Check out these casabas."
"Sorry. I'm not working on the problem of bad silicone implants."
Jane Goodwoman's face sagged almost as much as the rest of her. "Back in Boston, they don't react like that. You're not, you know-"