Assorted confused expressions crawled over the faces of the Harvesters. Disbelief won out in the end.
"Theodore Soars-With-Eagles is eternal," one shouted.
"Yes. Gitchee Manitou would not take him from us on the eve of a Chinchilla rebirth," insisted another.
"It can't hurt to look," prompted Remo.
The blonde in buckskin did look. She pulled aside the tepee flap and let out a screech.
"Brother Theodore is dead!" she cried.
Between mouthfuls, others took up the cry. "Oh, this is terrible!"
"Woe, we are leaderless!"
"The last of the proud Chinchillas has gone to the Happy Hunting Ground. It is the end of an era."
Through their plaintive cries, they kept stuffing bugs into their mouths.
"It might be a good idea to lay off the bugs until we know exactly what killed him," Remo suggested.
"We know what killed him."
"Yes, it is the hole in the ozone layer, created by the white man's inhuman progress."
"What if it was the bug?" Remo countered.
"Heresy. Don't let Gitchee Manitou hear you slander his powerful but humble creatures."
Remo looked at the thunderbugs as they were dropped into the boiling pot water. They immediately curled their inchlong bodies into tight brown balls, as if death relieved the tedium of their mundane existence.
"One last question," he said. "Ever hear of someone called the Eldress?"
No one had. Then someone remembered that in the days before the Great Schism, Brother Karl Sagacious spoke of the prophet he referred to as She.
"She?" said Chiun.
"That is the only name Brother Karl gave to her. We think it is one of the goddesses of his Greek ancestors."
"Sagacious was no more a Greek than I am," Remo said.
"You are too pale to be a Greek."
"Greeks were as pale as Americans," said Chiun.
"Pale as African-Americans, you mean."
The Master of Sinanju turned to Remo and undertoned, "These people are demented, Remo."
"Must be something they ate," Remo said, eyeing the contentedly boiling thunderbugs.
No one appeared to be lying-their pulse rates and respiration cycles were audible to both Remo and Chiun, and neither betrayed telltale nervousness-so there was no point in extracting any more information by force. Remo took Chiun aside and said, "Something's going on here. First the Snappers keel over, and now Magarac."
"These ones do not appear ill. Only hungry. Do they never stop eating?"
"What I want to know is how they stay so thin when all they do is eat bugs by the carload?"
"I do not know."
"Maybe they're bulimic."
Chiun's sparse eyebrows crept up his forehead. "What tribe is that?"
"Bulimic means they eat like pigs, throw up, eat some more, and throw up again so they can keep eating. It's called binging. Or purging. Maybe both."
"It sounds very Roman.," Chiun mused. "Romans would often eat and drink until their stomachs rebelled. Once emptied, they would resume eating. Between you and I, Remo, I think there was something in the water that made them demented."
"The Romans or the PAPAS?"
"Whatever," Chiun said vaguely.
Remo looked around. He saw no one throwing up. Just gorging. "We'd smell vomit if they were bulimics," he decided aloud.
"I would gladly inhale vomit if it would mean I no longer had to endure the stench that woman has attached to you."
Remo lifted his arm. He sniffed. "It's practically gone now." But a contented smile quirked his thin mouth.
Chiun made a disgusted face. "You reek and you do not even care. All my training, it was for naught. I have given a white man the sun source, and alas, he is still white."
"Forget it. Let's see, Brother Karl Sagacious is dead. The coroner is on ice. The Snappers have snapped their last. Theodore Magarac is now Theodore Worm-Food. And Thrush Limburger is nowhere to be found. It's gotta be Limburger behind this."
"Ridiculous," sniffed Chiun.
"Who's left?"
"We are. And as long as we remain upright while others recline, it will be recorded that we were the victorious ones."
"I mean who's left that could be behind this?"
Chitin looked skyward. His eyes tightened. "Perhaps there is a hole is the sky after all."
Remo threw up his hands. "I give up."
"But I do not," said Chiun, starting off.
Remo followed. As they passed from the Harvester area to Snapper turf, he noticed the parched grasses were springing up and down and he saw the rust red ants bounding from weed to weed just like grasshoppers. And like locusts on the march, they were hopping in their direction.