"See that growler, sir? There's a polar bear just starboard of the peak."
"Skinned," the captain said, nodding. "We might take a look."
Captain Service barked out orders, and the cutter changed course. Soon, under the prod of its churning screws, it warped alongside the looming iceberg and was made fast.
First off the cutter-before anyone could stop him-was the frail old Asian named Chiun. Bounding across the pack ice, he suddenly didn't look very frail at all. The crew was hard put to keep up with him, in fact.
His squeakily plaintive voice echoed off the blue berg. "Remo! Remo, are you here?"
The dead and rent polar bear quivered in answer. And a bluish face popped out from behind a flap of blood-spotted bear hide.
"Chiun!" a voice croaked.
"Look what you have put me through!"
The blue American's face became angry. "Me put you through? You're the one who marooned me on a freaking ice pack!"
The old Asian shrieked in reply, "Do not dare blame your miserable failures upon me! After all I have done for you!"
"I was asleep in the back seat one moment, and the next I'm playing Nanook of the North. With no sign of you anywhere."
"Was it my idea to come to this awful place of ice and bitter cold?"
"Yes!"
"Liar."
Captain Service and a complement of men trudged up as the argument grew shrill.
"Hah!" cried Chiun, pointing angrily toward the Canadians. "Tell your false tale of woe to these brave sailors who have risked all to succor you."
"It was his idea," Remo said, pointing back to Chiun. "He thinks this is the moon."
"You flipped the fickle coin that brought us here," Chiun countered.
"You flipped a coin?" Captain Service said, dumbfounded.
"Yeah," said the blue-faced Remo. "It was either here or Africa."
"Why would anyone go to Africa on vacation?" asked Captain Service in a stumped voice.
"Search me," said Remo, crawling out and letting his body shiver.
"Why are you shivering?" Chiun demanded.
"Because I'm freezing, damn it!"
"Bring an oilskin for this man," Service ordered. Chiun narrowed his eyes to thin slits. "Do not bother. Let him wear the pelt of his handiwork."
"I'm cold, not desperate. I'll take the oilskin."
To the astonishment of all, the tiny Asian stepped up to the dead polar bear and, with quick swipes of his long fingernails, stripped the dead brute of a section of pristine hide.
Remo pulled this over his shoulders. "Man, I thought I'd never live through the night."
Chiun looked around unhappily. "Where is the vehicle? I do not see it."
"Thanks for your consideration," Remo said bitterly, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. "But that moronic polar bear pushed it into the water."
"Then you must pay for it."
"There is also a fine for killing this bear without a proper license," said Captain Service. "I assume you do not possess the proper license?"
"License, my ass!" Remo exploded. "That bear jumped me! It was self-defense."
"He is quite the complainer for one who has been rescued," Captain Service remarked to Chiun.
Chiun rolled his eyes. "His carping has been incessant during all the years I have known the wretch. And he is forever falling into ridiculous predicaments such as this."
"He does appear to be the hard-luck sort," the captain agreed.
"Can we just be on our way?" Remo grumbled. "I feel like an idiot standing here in a polar-bear skin."
"Embrace the feeling," Chiun squeaked.
WHEN THEY PULLED into port, Remo said, "We're blowing this Popsicle stand, and I don't want to hear different."
"After you have paid the lawful fine," reminded Captain Service.
Wearily Remo handed over his gold card.
"As well as all expenses incurred during your rescue," Captain Service added.
"Don't you rescue people as part of your duties?" Remo asked.
"We rescue Canadians as part of our duties. Americans have to pay."
"Don't you people have universal health coverage up here?"
"We do. But what does that have to do with your situation?"
Remo pointed an accusing finger at the Master of Sinanju. "Because after twenty years of associating with this old reprobate, I have to be out of my mind to keep following him wherever he goes. Therefore, I plead insanity."
"Insanity is a plea normally made in a court of law."
Remo offered his wrists for cuffing. "Haul me before a magistrate, and I'll so plead."
"Sorry," said the captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter as he ran a credit check on Remo.
"I can hardly wait to get home," Remo told Chiun pointedly.
"You can hardly stand," countered Chiun.
"And you are not going home."
"Where am I going then?"
"Africa."
"I am not going to Africa."
"Or we can put off Africa and its soothing heat and go directly to Hesperia."
"Where's Hesperia?"
"Where we are going if we do not go to Africa."
"On second thought," said Remo, "how bad can Africa be?"
THE STEWARDESSES on the Air Ghana flight wanted to know if inasmuch as they were flying into war-torn Stomique, Remo wouldn't like to have sex one last time. "I don't intend to die in Africa," Remo told them.
"Once you are dead, it will be too late to change your mind," a second stewardess smilingly argued.
"I am not changing my mind," Remo assured her. "Are we not the most beautiful black women you have seen?" asked a third in a pouty voice.
Remo conceded the point. They were as elegantly slim as high-fashion models.
"And are we not alone in this great big aircraft, just you and the four of us, and is it not a flight of seven boring hours?"
"You're forgetting my chaperon," said Remo, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to the Master of Sinanju, seated six rows back over the starboard wing.
"If he is your chaperon, why do you not sit together?"
"We're having a tiff."
"You should not be angry with him. He looks very sweet."
"He tried to feed me to the polar bears a while back. Before that, he almost got me drowned. And I had to move the Sphinx all by myself."
"Then you should not care that your cruel chaperon disapproves your sleeping with four beautiful flight attendants."
"Did you know we were all Miss Ghana?" another stewardess wondered.
"I only sleep with Miss Universes, and even then only one per year."
The four ex-Miss Ghanas looked perplexed. They repaired to the galley, huddled briefly and when they came out again they wore fierce expressions.
"We have discussed this," one announced sternly, "and have concluded that you are a vicious racist for not sleeping with us."
"Yes. An obvious vicious racist."
"I am not a racist," Remo said wearily.
"A definite racist. One who refuses to sit with his yellow chaperon or sleep with gorgeous, willing and eager black women."
Remo got up. "All right, all right," he said.
The stewardesses brightened. "You are weakening?"
"No. I surrender absolutely."
The four ex-Miss Ghanas hurried to unbutton their blouses, uniforms and step out of their panty hose. "Not that," said Remo. "I'm going to sit with my chaperon."
"Homo," they hooted after him. "Girlie boy." After he took the seat beside the Master of Sinanju and a frosty silence hung in the air, Remo said, "I met Master Lu."
"Goody for you."
"He hinted that I was Korean."
"You are not good enough, brave enough or wise enough to be Korean," Chiun sniffed.
"These dreams I'm having are just that. Dreams."
Chiun made a snorting sound of derision.
"A person can't meet himself. It's impossible," Remo continued.
"You are impossible."
"You should talk."
The frosty silence returned.