"You know, it's strange knowing we won't run into Cheeta Ching or a Don Cooder out here," Remo remarked.
Chiun sniffed and said nothing. Cheeta Ching remained a sore subject with him. Don Cooder was one of the network anchor casualties and a thorn in their side for years, until they had pulverized him.
A reporter they recognized as Nightmirror correspondent Ned Doppler was speaking into a hand mike and was staring into a minicam.
"Here in the rugged wilderness of Mendocino County, California, a new breed of American environmentalists are taking a stand against the despoiling of nature. PAPA. People Against Protein Assassins. They don't eat meat or dairy products. Only pure, natural food enters their systems. Only the purest water, only foods harvested in their natural habitat. Here, in one of the richest breeding grounds of the thunderbug, a valiant band, ignoring the naysayers, are deep in an experiment more monumental than the much-maligned Biosphere 2 experiment. They are the vanguard, eating a natural insect, becoming human insectivores in their quest for purity and oneness with nature."
"Stay low, Little Father," warned Remo. "This guy knows you on sight."
Ned Doppler, his wealth of hair squatting on his head like some steroid-intoxicated fur, seemed oblivious to everything but his lines, which he was reading off cue cards.
"Crap," said Remo. They moved on.
Another live remote was in progress not much further along. Remo recognized the boyish-looking newsman as Tim Macaw, who anchored the MBC evening news.
"The Thunderbug. Miracle Food or Menace? Who is to know? Who can know? The debate is already raging here in this mountain fastness between the legions of PAPA and the hordes unleashed by the Food and Drug Administration. Will right triumph? Will good be rewarded? Will the PAPA continue to nourish their bodies with Ingraticus Avalonicusor . . . or will we ever know? Can we ever know? Can we ever really, really, really, ever know anything?"
"Not if we listen to dickheads like you," Remo yelled in a loud voice.
A producer called, "Cut!"
Macaw looked around angrily. "What jerk ruined my standup?"
But Remo and Chiun were no longer in sight. They had drifted on.
It was like that for the next five hundred yards. Reporters talking into microphones, giving opinions without foundation, speculating without sources, and clawing for a piney background that would make it seem as if they and only they had the exclusive story.
It was impossible to get close to the podium where Theodore Soars-With-Eagles and his adherents were about to appear, unless Remo and Chiun wanted to insinuate themselves into a growing circle of media that resembled a fast-forming mold ring, which they could, and risk having their faces televised nationally, which they preferred to avoid.
"Those big tents over to the south must be the Feds," Remo whispered. "Let's try them."
"I do not see the bugs everyone speaks of," said Chiun, examining the bottom of one sandal. "What do they look like?"
"Search me. All I know is that they're pretty small."
Chiun stooped, brushing the dried-out grass with his long fingernails. "I see many bugs. Which are which?"
"All bugs look alike to me. Just don't eat any, okay?"
Chiun straightened. "Remo! I would no sooner eat a bug than I would go naked in public."
"Do me a favor. Don't do either."
On the other side of a stand of ponderosa pine that seemed to form a natural barrier, they found the big army-style tents.
"Damn!" said Remo. "The media's all over this place too."
"Why do you not beat them, as did the adherents of the last President?" wondered Chiun. "He would simply revile them before large crowds, and his followers would descend on the Philistines with hard sticks."
"Pass," said Remo. He was looking around, thinking that this assignment, already a pain, was fast becoming a logistical nightmare. He was about to suggest they withdraw to the nearest hotel and wait for the feeding frenzy to subside when someone with a mircrophone suddenly shouted, "Hey! Isn't that Twin Peaks?"
"You mean Capital Hills."
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."