"Why?"
"Maybe it's a cultural exchange."
"With who?" Remo snorted. "Rod Serling?"
"Remo!"
Remo subsided. Cheeta went on.
"With any luck," Cheeta said smugly, "we'll get a skyscraper of theirs in exchange."
"What if they don't have skyscrapers in Dimension X?" Remo asked dryly.
"Then we'll probably get a pyramid, or something just as cosmic," Cheeta said flatly.
"This is not what my inmost eye tells me," Delpha warned.
"My ass," Remo said.
A crowd was collecting behind the ground-floor display windows of the skyscraper, where the boutiques and highpriced antique stores were. Others milled about the atrium lobby aimlessly.
Remo had never seen such forlorn faces. Some were calling out, but Remo couldn't hear the words.
He walked up to the glass of a window display.
"Remo," Chiun admonished. "Be careful. . . ."
"Relax, I'm just going to check this out."
Approaching, Remo lifted both hands to the glass. He set himself in case his highly attuned nervous system encountered something it could not handle, and he had to retreat fast.
His fingers were reflected in the glass. They approached one another's mirror image. At the point when they should have touched, both sets kept going. His fingers seemed to be swallowing each other.
Despite himself, Remo felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift and stiffen.
More incredibly, a part of the crowd inside, seeing how easily Remo's hand had passed through the seemingly solid glass, began beating their fists against the inner glass walls.
Their hands did not go through. In fact, the glass clearly wobbled in its frame from the strong blows.
"This is weird," Remo said, withdrawing his hands. They looked okay. He returned to the others.
"Do you still doubt that dark forces are at work?" Delpha inquired coolly.
"There's a scientific explanation," Remo insisted, frowning at the tower.
"No science of man can account for this."
"It's like a two-way mirror," Remo decided aloud. "You know, where the light goes through one way but not the other, so it's a mirror on one side and clear glass on the other."
"That makes no sense whatsoever," Cheeta Ching said snippily.
Remo frowned. "It's just a working theory. The light bulb wasn't invented in a day, you know."
Delpha lifted her hand of glory to the sky and waved it back and forth, getting oily smoke into their nostrils.
"Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath!" she howled. "Oh, All-Mother, we wish to communicate with the cameraman who disappeared into your nurturing earth."
"What is this crap?" Remo demanded.
"Shh, Remo!" Chiun hissed. "It is a kut."
Remo understood kut. It was Korean for "seance."
"This is loopy," he growled.
Chiun whispered, "Some matters must be dealt with in the traditional manner. Let the mudang work her white magic. It may not be Korean, but there may be some usefulness in it."
"How do you know it's not black magic, Little Father?"
Chiun shrugged. "She is white. What other kind of magic can she work?"
Delpha closed her eyes. Her face began to contort.
"She's in touch with higher forces," Cheeta said breathlessly.
"Looks like she's having a standing orgasm to me," Remo muttered.
Delpha's next words were incomprehensible. They weren't English or Korean. Remo decided they were probably witch, and therefore not important.
Delpha swayed like a palm tree that had been dipped in tar. Her face warped and twitched as her mouth chanted inarticulate phrases.
Then her eyes jumped open.
"I have seen! I have communed with the greater wisdom."
"What? What?" Cheeta demanded.
Delpha turned to Cheeta. "I have seen inside your womb."
"No!"
"Yes! It is a boy!"
Hearing this, Chiun turned to Remo, smiling happily. "Did you hear, Remo? A boy! A strapping Korean boy. I have always wanted a male child."
"The skyscraper!" Remo snapped. "Remember the skyscraper? We're here to figure out what the dingdong hell is going on with this stupid skyscraper."
Joyous faces collected themselves, sobered, and the three celebrants reluctantly returned to the matter at hand.
"Did you communicate with anyone about the mystery?" Cheeta wanted to know.
"I have heard a name spoken by the winds that whistle through this Tower of Babel."
"What name?"
"It begins with an R."
"The second name begins with an R," Delpha added.
"R . . . R . . ." Cheeta repeated, frowning. "A name that begins with an R . . ." Her smooth brow furrowed. "It's on the tip of my tongue."
"Try Randal Rumpp," Remo offered acidly.
"That's it!" Cheeta howled. "Randal Rumpp! Of course. Randal Rumpp. Is he responsible for this?" she asked Delpha.
"So the Great Goddess whispers in my third ear."
"Oh, brother," Remo groaned.
Chiun tugged on Remo's T-shirt and drew him aside. "Remo, what is wrong with you this night? Respect the powers that reveal hidden knowledge to that woman."
" 'Hidden knowledge'? She didn't exactly pull the name Randal Rumpp out of a hat, now did she?"
"I do not know if her white demons wear hats," Chiun said vaguely.
Remo pointed out the bronze lintel over the main entrance. It read: RUMPP TOWER.
"Maybe she got a major clue from that," he snapped.
Chiun looked, sniffed delicately, and said, "Coincidence."
Remo threw up his hands and groaned, "Oh, I give up!"
"Look!" Cheeta screeched. "There he is!"
"Who?" Remo said, turning.
"There he is! Randal Rumpp himself!"
"It is just as the All-Mother told me," Delpha called.
Chiun squeaked, "There, Remo! Proof!"
"Oh, blow it out your backside. Of course that's Randal Rumpp. It's his building, isn't it?"
In the main doorway of the Rumpp Tower Randal Rumpp had appeared, his hair slicked down with sweat and obviously breathing hard from exertion.
He was holding up a sign. It said: HALF PRICE.
"Don't tell me this is a cheap retail promotion," Remo growled.
Under the HALF PRICE were words scrawled by a blue felt pen: Wanna interview me about this?
Cheeta Ching read those words. Their full meaning hit her like an anvil dropped on her head from the thirteenth floor. She shouldered her camcorder and without another thought-or any thought in the first place-she sprinted for the main door.
Remo and Chiun were caught by surprise. Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that Cheeta Ching would go plunging into the building, knowing what she did.
But an unbroadcast story was like blood in the water to the Korean Shark, and she plunged in. Through the immovable door, through the unresisting glass, through the startled figure of Randal Rumpp.
And promptly began sinking into the floor.
"Cheeta!" Chiun shrieked. He started in.
Remo got in front of him. "Wait, Little Father. You can't go in there!"
"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "She must be saved!"
"Forget her," Remo said, moving to block the Master of Sinanju. "She's gone."
"But the baby!"
"I'm sorry, Chiun, I don't care what you do or say, I can't let you go there. It's crazy."
The wispy head of the Master of Sinanju darted this way and that, attempting to see around Remo. His eye were frantic, his mouth a round hole of anguish.
"Look!" he shrieked.
Remo turned. And the instant he did so, his legs seemed to turn to water.
For a wild moment, Remo thought he was sinking into the pavement under his feet. No such thing. The Master of Sinanju had, with a sandaled toe, separated his ankles with such speed that Remo never felt the twin blows.
He went down on his knees, his stricken eyes following the blue-and-golden specter that was Chiun.