"Listen carefully, Remo," said Harold Smith. "You are familiar with HELP?"
"Sure. It's been at the top of the news every night for the last month. You'd think the bubonic plague was back the way the media is trying to stampede people."
"The death toll has just reached thirteen people," said Smith, ignoring Remo's outburst.
"What's the big deal? If environmentalist dips are getting sick from eating bugs, then all they gotta do is stop eating the stupid bugs, and presto! No more problem. What's the big deal?"
"The big deal," said Harold W. Smith, "is that the members of People Against Protein Assassins, as they call themselves, are now claiming that according to every test known to man, the thunderbugs simply cannot be transmitting the HELP virus."
"Thunderbug?"
"It's the Indian name. I believe it is Pawnee."
"It's pap. The whole thing is pap. Pap and crap."
"The PAPA leader, Theodore Soars-With-Eagles, is claiming that the HELP virus is not a virus at all, but a result of the depletion of the ozone layer."
Chiun's voice lifted. "There is no ozone hole. The illustrious Thrush Limburger has told America this."
"What did he say?" asked Smith.
"Chiun's latest kick-or it was before he discovered the Home Shopping Network."
"He what?"
"Look, let's stay on the subject. You can have your heart attack when the charge card bills come in."
Smith sighed, sounding like a leaky steam valve. "Theodore Soars-With-Eagles has called upon the federal government to help head off the coming HELP epidemic."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"The new Vice President has heard his appeals and made a plea to the new President. He has asked us to look into it."
"Isn't this kinda flaky? Don't we have better things to do like-and here is major hint number 334-taking care of the quack who likes to help sick old ladies commit suicide?"
"The Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian matter is still under review."
"Call him Dr. Doom like everybody else. And I want a crack at him."
"Later."
"Don't we have the right to refuse dippy missions from the President?"
"We do," admitted Smith. "But the President has had a good look at our operating budget, and he is eyeing us for cutbacks."
"Wait'll he finds out Chiun just doubled the budget in one shopping day," Remo said.
Smith groaned. Then he said, "I have decided it would be politic to look into this."
"Chiun isn't going to like this," Remo warned.
Chiun, in the middle of unpacking a juice machine, straightened to demand, "What am I not going to like?"
Remo grinned and saw his chance. "Smitty wants us to look into the bug-eaters who are dying out in California," he said and waited for the wail of outraged complaint.
Instead, the Master of Sinanju said amiably, "Inform Emperor Smith that we will be happy to meet with the unfortunates who are reduced to eating bugs."
"We will?"
Chiun nodded. "Happily."
Remo glowered and said into the phone, "Just tell me what I absolutely have to know, Smitty."
"Their headquarters is called Nirvana West, which is a commune of sorts near the town of Ukiah, north of San Francisco. It was jointly founded by Brother Karl Sagacious and Theodore Soars-With-Eagles."
"Soars-With-Eagles?"
"He claims to be a Chinchilla Indian."
"Chinchilla?"
"According to the newspapers, that is his tribe's name. Although I must admit, his features do not appear very Indian."
"Wait a minute. Are we talking American Indian or East Indian?"
"American. "
"I played cowboys and Indians all over Newark as a kid, Smitty, and I never heard of any Chinchilla tribe. And whoever heard of an Indian brave named Theodore?"
"It's possible Theodore Soars-With-Eagles is a white man with some Chinchilla blood in him," said Smith.
"It's possible he's full of wampum too."
"There has been bad blood between the Sagacious faction and the Eagles faction of PAPA," Smith went on. "Eagles has ample motivation to have done away with Sagacious. Look into that angle, Remo. It may all be a tawdry power struggle in a fringe group. You will go in as investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, and mingle with the federal scientists who are already on site."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Keep your expenditures to a minimum." And Harold Smith hung up.
Remo hung up too and turned in time to see the Master of Sinanju running a blob of Silly Putty through his juice machine.
"Since when are you all hot to watch a bunch of lunatics in their natural element?" he asked Chiun.
"Since I have gotten tired of watching the old lunatics," replied the Master of Sinanju, lifting the lid and looking in to see the interesting concoction he had just created.
Chapter 4
It had all started on the opening day of school.
Five-year-old Kevin O'Rourke had been looking forward to school for a long time-almost three weeks, since his mother had first sat him down to explain kindergarten to him.
Kevin O'Rourke was an exceptional child. All mothers think their offspring are exceptional. Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was no different. She thought young Kevin quite a lad. And he was the spitting image of his dear father, like herself a native-born Irishman, but who fought for his adopted country, the U.S.A., in the Gulf War and died in a Scud missile attack, God rest his soul.
Young Kevin looked exactly like Patrick-the young Patrick whom Bernadette could still conjure up in her mind's eye whenever she thought back to the tiny Irish village of Dingle where they had grown up together. Kevin had the same open face; what one day would be the same fierce Catholic faith, the same stubbornness, but also the same willingness to trust others.
He made her feel proud even through her sharp loss.
And so on the day she drove him to the Walter F. Mondale Grammar School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke rode on a cushion of air. Oh, she was not without motherly pangs. For one thing, there had been no one with whom to talk over her decision to send Kevin to a public school instead of Catholic school. It had been an economic decision, really. The truth was she was already working two jobs and didn't have even the modest tuition the parochial schools charged. There were scholarships, certainly. Unfortunately, they didn't have any for Americans like Kevin O'Rourke. He was the wrong color for scholarships.
But this was Minneapolis, after all, where the public schools were supposed to be very good. Not like New York, where they had to have metal detectors in the school doorways to weed out the hooligans with their guns and their knives.
Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke shivered at the very thought. Even in the north of Ireland-she was from the south-they didn't have it so terrible.
There was a crowd in front of the school when she pulled up.
"Who are all those people, Mommy?" asked Kevin with those innocent blue eyes.
"Other mommies bringing their wee children," said Mrs. O'Rourke, but when she got Kevin out of the car she noticed an unusual number of very old ladies present. They were well past childbearing age. They looked too old to be teachers, to be sure. Perhaps they were grandmothers, she thought. The Lord alone knew how many mothers had to work these days.
Mrs. O'Rourke took little Kevin by his moist hand and led him up the walk to the school door entrance where the old ladies seemed to be concentrated. They carried old cigar boxes hung with what looked like colored balloons without air in them.
Little Kevin thought so too.
"Bawoons," he cried, pointing.
An old woman in a purple hat stepped up and smiled with teeth yellowed from too much tea and not enough brushing and asked, "Would you like one, sonny?"
"Yes!"
And the woman handed little Kevin O'Rourke a blue foil packet that said "genuine latex" on it.
Only then did Mrs. O'Rourke recognize the limp mult
icolored things hanging off the old lady's cigar box for what they were.
"Good God, madam! Are ye daft? Do ye not realize what it is ye be handing out to the boy?"
"It's for his own good," replied the woman in a snippy voice. "Here, peewee, let me help you with that," she told the boy.
And before Mrs. O'Rourke's horrified eyes, the old woman dug apart the foil packet and unrolled a lubricated latex condom that was a watermelon red.
"Madam!" Mrs. O'Rourke said huffily, snatching the thing before Kevin could touch it. "What is the matter with ye now?"
"I want my bawoon," said little Kevin, the tears already starting in his young eyes.
"It's not a balloon," his mother and the old woman said in the same breath. Only Mrs. O'Rourke's tone was angry. The old woman's was exasperated.
The old woman fingered one of the garish things as if it were rosary beads. "It's a condom, young man. Can you say con-dom?"
"Madam!"
"It's not to play with," the old woman went on primly. "It's for little boys to know about so when they become naughty men they don't cause diseases in nice young ladies."
"I won't be naughty," Kevin promised. "Can I have my bawoon now?"
"Madam, will you stop?" said Mrs. O'Rourke, clapping her hands over Kevin's ears. "The boy is too young to be knowin' of such things. Let him be, would you please?"
The old woman practically spat her vehemence into Mrs. O'Rourke's reddening face. "He is not too young! If we get them before they know anything, when they grow up they'll only know what we want them to know."
"What nonsense are ye talking now?" Mrs. O'Rourke's Irish temper was rising now.
"It is education. The board of education approved it four to three, and the three slackers were later reprimanded by the superintendent."
"Come on, Kevin," said Mrs. O'Rourke, not believing her ears. She pulled the boy along, trying to stifle her anger.
But another old woman blocked the door and said, "He doesn't have his little rubber safety cap. The young boys are not allowed in until they learn how to unroll their little caps and put them on."
"Put them on what?" Kevin asked, not understanding.
At that point the first old woman bustled up, and before Mrs. O'Rourke could block her son's innocent ears with her strong, protective hands, the old woman told little Kevin O'Rourke exactly where he should put his watermelon red condom.
Mrs. O'Rourke decked her with a roundhouse right that started at her right hip and didn't stop until the old woman was an awkward pile of bones on the school walk, her uppers and lowers bouncing in the grass.
The police were called. Mrs. O'Rourke tried to explain how the old women had provoked her with their foul terrible language-and in front of a mere boy at that-and the next thing she knew they were binding her trembling-with-rage hands behind her back with flexicuffs and she was in the back of what used to be called a paddy wagon in the days the Irish were treated like common dirt in the streets of America, and a matron was explaining to her that her little Kevin, the only good and fine thing that had come out of her brief marriage to darlin' Patrick, would be going to a foster home and the chances of getting him back were not very good at all.
Up until that day, Race Branchwood was just another unhappy three-hundred-thirty-pound disk jockey playing middle of the road music and reading the news-ninety uninterrupted seconds of news as the station's promos boasted-every half hour.
It was no glamour job. Oh, some thought differently. But not Race Branchwood. He had gotten his communications degree from Emerson College and thought he was destined for greater heights than playing mush for mushheads.
As it would turn out, Race Branchwood was absolutely right.
But on this early September day in the year 1991, Race Branchwood was Thrush Limburger, a name which he hated but which was a condition of employment at Radio Station WAKO in the Twin Cities, when he chanted into the microphone for the one-thousand-five-hundred-and-seventy-seventh time, "And now, ten uninterrupted minutes of seventies music, count them, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one uninterrupted minutes from the station that still plays with your bippy. This is Thrush Limburger, and I'll be right back."
He switched off the mike and left the sound booth, muttering under his breath as he hurried to the hall coffee machine.
"Thrush Limburger, my left testicle."
"What was that, Branchwood?" came the surly voice of the station manager.
"I said I got heartburn in my left ventricle."
"Burp. And while you're at it, try to lose a few hundred pounds. The next Arbitron book is only two months away and we're trying to project a lean-and-mean image. How can you show your face at public appearances looking like the the Pillsbury Doughboy?"
"What do you think people expect from a guy named Limburger?" Race Branchwood snapped back.
"The Limburger was to cover our bets. I want you looking like a Thrush, not just sounding like one."
"I could do better work under my own name. Race."
"Everybody knows that Race is short for Horace. You look like a Horace too."
"I am a Horace, you dink. It's my name, for crying out loud."
"We've had this idiot conversation before. I'm going to be next door having my hair done."
"Must be louse season again," muttered Race Branchwood, continuing on to the coffee machine, walking on tippy toes like so many three-hundred-pounders do. He coaxed the machine to fill the cup all the way this time just by punching the C in Coffee and added two sugars-real and not that pink stuff he hated-and a dollop of real cream and was back in time to pick off the latest news script that the WAKO news writer had laid beside his mike.
Race Branchwood took a quick sip of the coffee before picking up the script and switched on his mike.
He didn't know it, but the switching on of the microphone marked the end of his disk jockey career. It was also the end of Race Branchwood. He would never be Race Branchwood again. That was the only downside, the only regret he was to feel for the rest of his natural life.
"And now," he said in a booming baritone that was redolent of the cream in his coffee, "here is the WAKO Ninety-Second News."
Race Branchwood cast his professional eye over the first item and did something he had never done in his radio career. He froze at the mike. But only for six seconds. He took a second hit of the coffee he was destined never to finish.
Clearing his throat, he tried again. "A Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was arrested today for-" Race stopped. "This is unbelievable," he said in a stunned whisper. "I mean, ladies and gentlemen, this is an unreal item I have just been handed. Let me-give me a moment here, please."
He tried again. "A Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was arrested today for assault and battery of a seventy-eight-year-old woman named Agnes Frug-that's F-R-U-G, like the dance. Now the reason Mrs. O'Rourke was compelled to coldcock the other woman is very simple. It seems that Ms. Frug-the script says Ms. attempted to force Mrs. O'Rourke's five-year-old son Kevin to put on a condom before he could enter the Walter F. Mondale Grammar School. It was Kevin's first day of school. He never got in the door. As a matter of fact, he's now in a foster home. Mrs. O'Rourke is in the county lockup. No, I am not making this up. This is an actual news item and it took place in our fair city."
Race Branchwood took a deep breath. He looked at the wall clock and saw that he was already sixty seconds into the Ninety-Second News spot and he had only read the first squib.
Then he said, "Ah, the hell with it." And with that he became Thrush Limburger forevermore.
"You know what really gets under my skin, ladies and gentlemen? It's the whackjobs. The whackjobs who think five-year-olds have to be indoctrinated in the scare of the month. And the feminasties who put them up to it. And the old toot grannies who get their jollies playing with condoms in public. My friends, if you were to take those old toot grannies and turn their biological clocks back fifty years to when they were twenty, and hand them a rubber, they w
ould have A) slapped you right in the face and B) whistled up the cops. And you, my friend, would be doing hard time on a morals charge.
"So how is it fifty years later those same old ladies are spending their waking hours packaging prophylactics and passing them out to kids too young to even begin to understand what the hell these things are. I'll tell you why. Because before menopause hit them like a ton of bricks and took away the last shred of common sense they may or may not have had, they were terrified at the very thought of a condom. Now they can't get enough of them. And why not? They're out of the game. They can't play anymore. And these dried-up old biddies can't wait to throw these things around like bingo chips."
In the control room, the program director was turning purple. Thrush Limburger-he was Thrush Limburger now even if he didn't know it-never particularly liked the program director, so he ploughed on, hoping to get the man's face to match the particular shade of lavender Thrush happened to be wearing around his own neck that day.
The program director pointed at his watch, at the wall clock, and then at his forehead and pretended to pull the trigger of an imaginary gun, until he realized there was no stopping Thrush Limburger. He buried his head in his arms and Thrush continued on, an unstoppable juggernaut of opinion given voice.
"When are you people going to wake up out there? How many Bernadette O'Rourkes have to be hauled off and stripsearched? And how many Kevin O'Rourkes have to end up wherever some bureaucrat with the child protective services division happens to drop him before people take a stand against these idiots who think they know what's better for our kids than we do? Is everybody asleep, or am I the only one with a functioning brain? Does anyone share my moral outrage at this lunacy?"
"If this goes on, they'll be having these poor little kids simulating safe sex with one another just to satisfy these nutso do-gooders. "
The WAKO station manager thought he heard the booming voice of his most problematic DJ coming through the chrome hairdrier capping his head and snapped his fingers. The hairdresser turned and looked blank.
"Is that Thrush?" he asked.
"Yeah, and he's sure telling it like it is."
"What?" The station manager flung up the hairdrier. He always got his hair done at the ladies salon because they knew how to treat the subtle wave in his hair. He also had a crush on a manicurist named Bruce. He listened with growing horror.
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