"Hey, look out there!" the base op called in alarm.
Chiun, who hadn't been paying any attention to the exchange between Remo and the base op, was over by the door of the cinderblock building, raptly poking and prodding a rackful of skis. One of the bolts had come loose, and the skis were dangling precariously. With one tug, Chiun forced one of them out of the rack and sent the rest clattering to the floor.
"A strange utensil indeed," he remarked, inspecting the smooth polished wood of the ski.
"Now just a second there, old timer." the base op said, his rotund face clouding. "It took me near half
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a day to set up that there rack. I need those skis."
"I'll pay for any damage," Remo said quickly. The germ of an idea was growing. "Say, what do you use these for, anyway?"
The base op lumbered darkly toward the pile of skis and inspected them. "These here are cross-country skis," he said. "I come to work in 'em. My old clunker Olds wouldn't make it out here in this weather if I filled her full of diamonds. Keep some extra pairs around in case somebody needs 'em. Out here we're used to bad winters." He was puffing and grunting as he bent over to inspect the fallen rack. "Well, no harm done, I 'spect. Just a hell of a lot of trouble to stick this thing back up." He waddled slowly back to the counter, where he produced a hammer and rummaged for nails.
"No problem," Remo said. He located the fallen nails on the floor, aligned the rack with the holes in the wall, and pressed the nails back into place. By the time the base op arrived with his tools, the rack was repaired.
"Well, that was mighty nice of you," he said, his face regaining its kindliness. "How'd you do that so fast?" "
"It was nothing," Chiun said.
"I'd like to buy a couple of pairs from you," Remo said.
The base op laughed. "You planning on skiing to South Dakota?"
"Maybe," Remo said. "I'll give you a thousand dollars for two pairs." He pulled out his wallet.
The base op blinked with surprise. "That's a pretty nice piece of change, boy."
"It's worth it to me. Will you take it?"
"Well, I don't know ... I don't feel right sending
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you and the old fella out in the weather like this, Why don't you wait til! the storm breaks? I'll get a good pilot to fly you over to Deaver in the morning."
"I can't wait till morning," Remo said. "Is it a deal?"
"Well . . ." After some thought, the base op reached out and took the bills. "It still don't seem right," he said. But Remo was already fitting the skis onto Chiun's tiny feet.
The old man grinned ecstatically. "Skates," he said, his eyes sparkling.
"Skis. We'll cover ground faster than we could on foot."
The base op held up a pudgy hand. "No, I know this is a free country and all, but traveling to South Dakota on skis is just plain ridic'lous. I can't stop you from killing yourself, sonny, but you got to think of the old fella here. He'll never make it."
Chiun stood up, wobbled for a second, then clapped to the door. "How do they work?" he asked, obviously thrilled with his new toy.
"You've got to push yourself along with these," Remo said, holding up a pair of poles. But it was too late. Chiun was already out the door and picking up speed fast, sliding around the small building at eight revolutions a minute.
"Got to hand it to him. The old guy's got a natural talent," the base op said, bewildered.
Past the runway lights they watched Chiun speed toward a high drift. He skimmed the top of it with barely a mark and sailed skyward, clearing a high pine. He was cackling exultantly.
"I don't think you have to worry about him," Remo said.
Chapter Eleven
Seymour Burdich set down the crowbar and moved his fingers to get some feeling back into them. He stood knee-deep in snow at the locked iron gate to Shangri-la. Through the swirling snowstorm he could barely make out the dark outline of the mansion.
They were in there, ail the Beautiful People who made the world go round, only they weren't beautiful now. They were screaming and shivering in helpless terror over the thought that their guru, Dr. Foxx, had abandoned them. Like children, Burdich thought, blowing on his hands. He'd managed, in the hour or so that he'd been outside, to pry open two of the bars, nearly wide enough to squeeze through. He picked up the crowbar and went to work again.
He was going to be a hero for this. The thought warmed him a hundred times more than the old kerosene lamp that glowed dully beside the ironwork of the gate. Heroes were immediately accepted with that group. Look at Remo. He wasn't even a member, and they'd let him stay on. Because he was a hero.
God knew he was the only one in that crowd, although, he had to admit, Posie Ponselle was okay. She'd at least kept her wits about her. Posie pulled out
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blankets and organized a team to keep the fireplaces going and brewed coffee over the open fire in the banquet hall and played the piano. Also, she'd talked the group into changing out of those ridiculous togas they were wearing and into party clothes. That was just !ike Posie, turning a nightmare into a party.
She was okay. Burdich would do a special writeup on her in the Celebrity Scoop when he got back to New York. But the rest of them were completely out of it, screaming their heads off about the end of the world and dying of old age and all kinds of crazy nonsense. A bunch of babies, that's what they were. Some Beautiful People. Ai! the guts of a playground full of kin-dergartners.
And to think that he'd agonized for twenty years about not having the scratch to join them at their precious Shangri-la. What a crock. When it came right down to it, no one had even volunteered to help him pry open the gate. They'd all said they were too old.
He'd laughed secretly to himself at that one. Here were the creme de la creme, the chosen few who, like Coleridge's dreamer in the poem Foxx read at the ceremony, had entered the magic circle of eternal youth. Here were people who had drunk the milk of Paradise every month since before the Flood, practically, until every one of them looked twenty years younger than he did, and they were all moaning that they were too old. Crybabies.
The weird thing was, when Burdich looked at them in the firelight before he left the house, they did, look old. It was scary. Even Posie Ponselle, easily one of the great beauties of all time, was starting to look haggard. There was something around her eyes and mouth. It wasn't right there on the surface-she was
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still a knockout-but it seemed to lie just beneath her skin, something that was trying to come through, something . . . decayed.
Burdich shook his head to clear it. It was just his imagination. Posie was tired, that was all. That went for all of them. Tired and hysterical. And it went triple for Burdich. He was half frozen already, and he hadn't even made it out of the gate yet.
But it would be worth it. Once he carne back with the cops, all the rich nobs at Shangri-la would give him a hero's welcome. He wouldn't be-what did Remo call him?-a mascot. He wouldn't be their mascot anymore, tolerated at their highbrow parties because he was mildly helpful to them. No more. After he saved their rich butts, they would take him into their hearts without reservation. He would be one of them. He would belong.
Still, at the moment, Burdich's forthcoming triumph seemed empty. Shangri-la, for all its illustrious clients, was a weird place, and he'd come out into the cold as much to get away from it as to perform his heroic act. He wanted to help them, yes. He wanted to be their savior, their champion. But mostly he wanted to get as far away from that dark house full of screaming half-ghosts as he could.
With one last, back-wrenching tug that pulled his shirt and his undershirt out of his pants so that his back was exposed to the stinging waves of snow, the bars squeaked open the last centimeter or so necessary to let him out. He pressed himself through the bars, feeling as if he were going through a spaghetti machine, grateful that he hadn't put on much weight through the years. Keeping his boyish figure had been mostly a function of being stone broke most of
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the time, but it had finally been of some use. He pulled the flickering kerosene lamp out after him and started the long hike toward . . .