"Your ancestor ate a fossil skeleton?"
"No, he drank it."
"Chiun's ancestor supposedly slew a dragon," Remo explained.
"A true Chinese dragon," Chiun sniffed. "Not like your ugly thing."
"Thank you," said Nancy.
"And he ground up the bones to make some kind of medicine, so he could live forever, or something," Remo added.
"In the East, dinosaur bones are sometimes ground up and mixed in philters," Nancy said thoughtfully. "They are believed to be very beneficial. How far along did your ancestor get, Master Chiun?"
"He squandered one hundred forty-eight winters," said Chiun.
"Squandered?"
"Chiun thinks he should have saved a few bones for his descendants," Remo added.
"Oh. "
They drove along in silence. The sun was climbing the sky, turning it the color of brass. The jungle birds were screeching and calling. Somewhere a hippo bellowed. And Nancy began to sweat profusely.
She noticed that Remo and the old Oriental named Chiun were not sweating and wondered why.
"We don't sweat," Remo said unconcernedly.
"Nonsense. All mammals sweat. Or pant."
"We don't pant either."
"What is a mammal?" asked Chiun.
"A dinosaur is a reptile and we're mammals," Remo explained.
"Does that mean monkey?"
"A monkey is a mammal, just like us," Nancy said.
"Just like you. I am Korean."
"What does that mean?" Nancy asked Remo.
"I am not like whites," Chiun said stiffly, "who believe they are the offspring of monkeys."
"That's a fallacy," said Nancy.
Chiun indicated Remo with a long-nailed finger. "Tell this baboon."
"Hey! I resent that."
"Humans are descended from a monkeylike primate ancestor, not a monkey per se."
"Some have not descended very far," Chiun sniffed.
"Chiun's people think they're descended from the Great Bear that came down from the sky, or something," Remo explained.
"Bears are mammals, too," Nancy said. "But that still doesn't explain why neither of you are sweating in this heat."
"Chiun can explain it better than me."
"We do not sweat because we understand that we do not have to sweat," Chiun said flatly.
"You have to sweat."
"Enemies can smell sweat. To sweat is to die."
"That's a very mammalian sentiment," Nancy said dryly, "but that doesn't change the basic fact that you have to sweat in order to cool your body."
"We sweat when we wish to," Chiun allowed. "In private."
"Sweating is optional," Remo added.
"Are you saying you can stay cool without having to sweat?"
"That's about the size of it," Remo said.
"What you are describing is supermammalian physiology," Nancy said slowly.
In the front seat, Remo and Chiun looked at one another, lifted doubtful eyebrows, and said nothing.
"That would be an amazing adaptive response," Nancy went on.
Remo shrugged. "Hey, what do you expect? We mammals outlived the dinosaurs, didn't we?"
"An accident."
"My foot. Dinosaurs died out for two reasons. They were too slow and too stupid."
"Wrong."
Remo snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah, right. Three reasons. It got too cold. They were cold-blooded. So they couldn't stay warm when the ice age came."
"Wrong again."
"Okay," Remo said sourly, "let's hear your theory."
"It's not my theory. But never mind that. It boils down to an asteriod or comet strike. It threw up dust particles that blocked out the sunlight, killing off the plants that the herbivores subsisted on, and when the carnivores that ate the herbivores had no food source, they died out, too."
"Prove it."
"Geologists have discovered a worldwide layer of iridium deposited in the earth's soil about sixty-five million years ago, coinciding with the end of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs began dying off. Iridium is rare on earth, and could only have gotten into the soil from an extraterrestrial object striking the planet and dispersing the particles in the atmosphere. There's a 110-mile crater down in the Yucatan Penninsula called Chicxulub, which is the probable impact point. If you don't believe me, you can look it all up."
"Anything else I should know while my childhood memories are burning to the ground?" Remo said glumly.
Nancy smiled. "Let me see. We now think dinosaurs were smarter than previously believed. And faster. Much faster."
"That thing back there obviously excepted."
"Well, we haven't seen it gallop, but it is possible."
Remo snorted. "Give me a break. It's too fat to gallop."
"You are out of date, aren't you? Apatosaurus is much more agile than the old Brontosaur was thought to be. According to tendon scars found on their fossil skeletons, they could rear up on their hind legs to reach food in the tall conifers and ginkgo trees of the Upper Jurassic."
"Crap. Crap and double crap. That thing would have trouble getting out of bed. It's the original 'I've fallen down and I can't get up' dinosaur. That's why there are no more dinosaurs. They were slow and dumb. Mammals beat them at the evolution game."
"Wrong again. Dinosaurs may have been superior to mammals. At their height, they occupied every ecological niche above the size of a chicken. If not for a cosmic accident, they would still be dominant."
"I don't believe it."
"I don't believe you," Nancy shot back. "You're a grown man and you have the belief system of an eleven-year-old boy."
"I do not believe either of you two," Chiun sniffed. "You are both carrying on like two children, and making less sense. And I do not understand half the words you are speaking."
"Well," Remo said defensively, "any way you slice it, it's not a dragon."
"In that," Nancy said, "you and I are in rare agreement."
"It is an African dragon," said Chiun. "There are Chinese dragons, and English dragons, and African dragons. The meat that sheathes its mighty bones is not important. Only the bones themselves."
"And you may not have one," Nancy said quickly. "Get that through your sweet little skull, please."
"Ingrate."
"What about the one whose name I can never remember," Remo said suddenly. "The lizard with the sail on his back."'
"Dimetrodon?"
"That's him. He was a lizard, right?"
"Oh, I wish you hadn't brought Dimetrodon up."
"Why not?"'
"He's not even considered a dinosaur anymore."
"What was he-blackballed for biting?"
"No, he was an early mammal-like reptile."
"Next, you're going to tell me Tyrannosaurus Rex was a kangaroo," Remo said sourly.
"A woman who would deny a dragon its proud heritage is capable of anything," Chiun said in a bitter tone.
Chapter 13
Word travels fast in the bush.
By the time the train rattled toward the shantytowns that lay scattered outside of Port Chuma, the rails were lined with curious Gondwanalanders.
They cheered the locomotive's chugging approach. Cheers of delight, awe, and surprise attended the sighting of the great flatcar and its saurian cargo.
At each point, the Master of Sinanju waved to the admiring crowds. They waved back with enthusiasm.
"It is good to find a land that appreciates us," Chiun told Remo. They were seated in the passenger car now. Nancy sat in a facing seat.
"I think they're excited about the dinosaur," Remo told him.
"Pah!"
"Of course, I could be wrong," Remo admitted.
"We will know when we reach the capital. Where no doubt the king waits to greet me."
"Gondwanaland is ruled by a president, not a king," Nancy pointed out.
"When he is seen in my company," Chiun sniffed, "his subjects will demand that he be crowned, for it is well known in these lands that he who befriends the Master of Sinanju sleeps serene in his castle."
Nancy leaned forward and whispered to Remo. "Have you given thought to committing him?"