"So the Great Goddess whispers in my third ear."
"Oh, brother," Remo groaned.
Chiun tugged on Remo's T-shirt and drew him aside. "Remo, what is wrong with you this night? Respect the powers that reveal hidden knowledge to that woman."
" 'Hidden knowledge'? She didn't exactly pull the name Randal Rumpp out of a hat, now did she?"
"I do not know if her white demons wear hats," Chiun said vaguely.
Remo pointed out the bronze lintel over the main entrance. It read: RUMPP TOWER.
"Maybe she got a major clue from that," he snapped.
Chiun looked, sniffed delicately, and said, "Coincidence."
Remo threw up his hands and groaned, "Oh, I give up!"
"Look!" Cheeta screeched. "There he is!"
"Who?" Remo said, turning.
"There he is! Randal Rumpp himself!"
"It is just as the All-Mother told me," Delpha called.
Chiun squeaked, "There, Remo! Proof!"
"Oh, blow it out your backside. Of course that's Randal Rumpp. It's his building, isn't it?"
In the main doorway of the Rumpp Tower Randal Rumpp had appeared, his hair slicked down with sweat and obviously breathing hard from exertion.
He was holding up a sign. It said: HALF PRICE.
"Don't tell me this is a cheap retail promotion," Remo growled.
Under the HALF PRICE were words scrawled by a blue felt pen: Wanna interview me about this?
Cheeta Ching read those words. Their full meaning hit her like an anvil dropped on her head from the thirteenth floor. She shouldered her camcorder and without another thought-or any thought in the first place-she sprinted for the main door.
Remo and Chiun were caught by surprise. Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that Cheeta Ching would go plunging into the building, knowing what she did.
But an unbroadcast story was like blood in the water to the Korean Shark, and she plunged in. Through the immovable door, through the unresisting glass, through the startled figure of Randal Rumpp.
And promptly began sinking into the floor.
"Cheeta!" Chiun shrieked. He started in.
Remo got in front of him. "Wait, Little Father. You can't go in there!"
"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "She must be saved!"
"Forget her," Remo said, moving to block the Master of Sinanju. "She's gone."
"But the baby!"
"I'm sorry, Chiun, I don't care what you do or say, I can't let you go there. It's crazy."
The wispy head of the Master of Sinanju darted this way and that, attempting to see around Remo. His eye were frantic, his mouth a round hole of anguish.
"Look!" he shrieked.
Remo turned. And the instant he did so, his legs seemed to turn to water.
For a wild moment, Remo thought he was sinking into the pavement under his feet. No such thing. The Master of Sinanju had, with a sandaled toe, separated his ankles with such speed that Remo never felt the twin blows.
He went down on his knees, his stricken eyes following the blue-and-golden specter that was Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju bounded through the glass doors.
"No, Little Father!"
And before Remo's horrified eyes, he too began sinking into the lobby floor.
Chapter 9
Remo tried to get up. His legs refused to obey him. He was on his knees and helpless.
"Chiun! Chiun!"
"O Shub-Niggurath, hear our plea," moaned Delpha. "Smite the clutching hands of the Great Horned One, who pulls your children down into his fiery domain."
"If there's anything constructive you can do," Remo said, strugging to get his legs to work, "do it now."
Delpha closed her eyes. Her green eye shadow made it seem like they had been replaced by dull glass orbs. "It is in the lap of the All-Mother," she murmured.
His face twisting with fear and anger, Remo watched as Cheeta and then Chiun sank into the seemingly solid lobby floor. Randal Rumpp stuck around only long enough to acquire a dark stain in the crotch of his sharply creased pants. Then he fled in the direction of a fire door. He was followed by a knot of people shaking their fists at him.
Remo closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to watch. He willed the blood to return to his legs. He got the pins-and-needles sensation that told of returning function. Still, his legs were slow to respond. Whatever it was Chiun had done, it certainly had been effective. Remo was almost an invalid.
He blocked out Cheeta's frantic cries of, "This can't happen to me! I'm the perfect anchorperson! Somebody do something!"
There was no sound from the Master of Sinanju. Of course, Remo realized, Cheeta's screechy caterwauling may have been drowning him out.
Finally, when his circulation was again flowing normally, Remo regained control over his lower body. He ignored the tingling residual pain and found his feet.
Remo ran to the main entrance. There he found a yellow hump on the pink marble floor that looked like half a grapefruit fringed with cotton. As he watched helplessly it sank from sight, silently, soundlessly, and completely.