"The answer is not shots," said the girl. "It is to stop raising and eating swine. It is to stop wasting millions of tons of grain fattening steers so that we can eat meat. Do you understand now?"
"No," said Remo.
"Why should you?" the girl said. "You work for this decadent company. Well, we're going to shut it down. Tight. And after this one, others. All across the country, until this nation comes to its senses. What's your name?"
"Remo Nichols," said Remo, watching the black guard trying to fit pennies into the pay phone.
"I'm Mary Beriberi Greenscab. I wouldn't suggest trying to get in, if that's what you're thinking of."
"Mary Beriberi Greenscab?"
"Short for Marion. You want to know what my name means?"
"Not right now," said Remo. "I'm planning on lunch soon."
"Beriberi is a deficiency disease marked by an inflammatory or degenerative change of the nerves, digestive system, or the heart, which means it usually causes a person to have fits, migraines, a bloated stomach, diarrhea, and heart attacks."
"That's nice," said Remo. "We'll have to talk again real soon." He saw that the guard had found a dime and was talking now on the telephone. The police would be here soon.
"And Greenscab signifies the micro-thin layer of algae that forms on the inside lining of the stomach just before starvation."
"Terrifically disgusting," Remo said. "If you'll excuse me…"
"If you try to get in," said Mary suddenly, "we will have to stop you."
"Stop away," said Remo, going for the door.
"I warn you. It'll be a shame to trample you."
"It's all right," said Remo, his hand on the lock of the glass door. "I'm a vegetarian. And I don't work here."
"I don't believe you," said Mary. She barked out, "Gotta scab here. Get him."
Just as Remo pressed the lock out of the glass and pushed open the door, the 24 picketers turned and charged as if they had been waiting for that command all day.
Remo saw the black guard blanch. Inside the door, Remo leaped up to the top of the entrance over the head of the crowd and the protesters, eight feet wide at their narrowest point, hit the three-foot-wide, entrance at a speed of 13 miles an hour. The splat and crunch were gratifying.
Remo hopped lightly down to the floor as the first groaning began. The guard had backed against the wall.
"I called the cops. You better get out of here. I called the cops."
Remo spotted O'Donnell's name and office number on the wall directory and ran off down the main hall, singing "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow."
The office door was locked. Remo popped it open and three Orientals stuck their hands in Remo's face. Or tried to, because just as the first fingernail reached the point where the air displaced by its movement slightly increased the pressure against Remo's skin, Remo moved instinctively.
His head moved across, his own hand fluttered out, and the first man became a wall fixture. Remo slid his body sideways into O'Donnell's office, his foot moving across at a sharp angle to his body, and because Remo wanted to save one of them, the second man found his first kneecap driven into his second kneecap, making jelly of both. The man crumbled, howling, to the floor as the third Oriental faced Remo and executed a perfectly straight-arm karate thrust toward Remo's exposed neck.
Perfect, except Remo drove his own fingers like a wedge between the Orientals' fingers and through his radius and ulna, cracking the man's arm like a piece of kindling.
The shattering concussion exploded the Oriental back through the office window out onto the stone below, which he hit with a terminal thump. Remo turned just as the second man fell on his own upraised fingernail. His torso sank to the floor and began to leak blood onto the carpet.
It was only then that Remo noticed the length and sharpness of the Orientals' fingernails, as well as a paper-thin cut across the top of his right hand. Remo clenched his fist and watched a thin red line grow between his second and third finger. A tiny bead of blood crossed his wrist and disappeared into his shirt.
It had been so long since he had seen his own blood that the sight fascinated him. But a commotion out in the hall broke him out of his reverie.
Remo ran quickly behind O'Donnell's desk, picked up the telephone and jabbed the touch-tone numbers, four-oh-seven-seven.
Remo heard the line click three times, then a recorded voice said: "The number you have reached is not in service at this time. Please check your number to be sure you are dialing correctly. Thank you."
Then 24 meat protesters piled into the room.
CHAPTER SIX
The police, dealing with their first murder in 11 years, were really tough. They talked to all the picketers and looked at them real hard.
Every time one of the protesters would answer "why?" to a question, the policeman would say, "Do you want to go downtown?" and then the picketer would answer the question.
Except once, when a thin, tall, dark-haired thick-wristed marcher asked "why?" and the cop said "Do you want to go downtown?" and the thick-wristed marcher said, "Is it nicer than uptown?"
"Don't get wise. Name?"
"Mine or yours?"
"Yours."
"Remo Nichols.".
"Address?"
"Number 152 Main Street." There was always a 152 Main Street.
"Did you ever see, know, or kill the three alleged victims?"
"No."
"Who saw you not kill them?"
"Everybody. Nobody. I don't know what that question means," Remo said.
"Do you want to go downtown?"
"I did. I saw him," said Mary Beriberi Greenscab.
The policeman turned to her.
"What's your name?"
"Mary Beriberi Greenscab."
"Address?"
"Do you want to know what my name means?"
"Do you want to go downtown?"
Remo left the Westport Meatamation plant a free man. The police never called him back, deciding after intense discussion, to call the three deaths a double-murder suicide resulting from an argument among the three Orientals.
Mary caught up with Remo near his car where Chiun still sat.
"It took you long enough. What happened to your hand?" Chiun asked.
Remo looked down at his right hand. Already the fingernail slice had become a dim pink line as Remo's body regenerated tissue to heal and restore itself.
"I was cut by a fast finger," Remo said.
Chiun stared at Mary. "What did you do wrong?" he asked Remo.
"I didn't do anything wrong. He was just faster than I expected was all."
"You assumed again," Chum chided. "You assumed that you were dealing with less than yourself."
"Isn't everyone?" asked Remo.
"You are lucky it was not your throat that was cut," Chiun said petulantly.
Mary coughed quietly under Chiun's gaze and pulled a plastic packet out of her pocket and ripped it open with her teeth.
"Anybody want some caraway seeds in carob syrup?" she asked.
"I would as soon eat dirt," said Chiun evenly. "Remo, who is this canary who eats birdseed?"
"Be nice," said Remo. "Mary here helped me get out of the mess inside with the cops. And she's against meat and against swine-flu vaccine."
"The joy in my heart is boundless," said Chiun.
"Not nearly as boundless as it'll be when I tell you we're going to Houston."
Chiun nodded sadly. "And yet you pursue this mission, despite my warnings." He scrambled out of the car. "You will see before much longer."
Chiun turned and walked away, and Remo watched until Chiun moved over a slight hill, his kimono wafting behind him, his arms folded in front, making him look like a cone on wheels.
"One little cut and he goes all to pieces," muttered Remo. He turned to Mary who was sucking on the plastic. "Sorry about that."
Mary's head came up, bits of seed sticking to her lower lip. "Sure." She licked the seeds up, nodding toward the diminishing Chiun. "Friend of yours?"