"Pass," Remo said, tossing the limp wig into the jacket hollow.
By the sounds of the ensuing happy growl, Ronaldman had snagged his hairpiece in his sharp teeth. Coat still draped over his head, he spun and ran straight into the side of his news van.
As Stan Ronaldman sprawled, unconscious on the ground, wig drooping from his mouth like a furry, distended tongue, Remo turned away.
"Let's get a move on," he announced.
"Should you not first call Smith?" Chiun asked.
"Not this time," Remo replied, shaking his head. "He's worked himself up into too much of a lather already. I don't want to talk to him until we have something concrete."
"Where you go, Remo Williams, I will follow," the Master of Sinanju proclaimed. "After all, I am agreeable." His dry lips curled to form a mummified smile.
"Stop doing that," Remo groused.
The two men walked away from the gathered reporters, who persisted in their death watch even though the man whose death they were so eager to report was no longer there.
Chapter 13
In the San Francisco headquarters of Earthpeace, located south of Golden Gate Park in a small office complex off Lincoln Way, Brad Mesosphere smiled the oily, superior smile he'd perfected as a PR flak for the world's most famous environmental organization.
His five-pack-a-day cigarette habit had turned his once yellow teeth a dirt friendly brown.
"My allies," he announced to the five Earthpeacers arranged around the grubby conference table, "I have just learned that phase one has been a complete success."
The faces that looked back at him were eager. "They made it to South America?" one man asked, awed. His filthy clothes looked as if they'd been used to mop out the monkey house.
"According to what I just heard, they're through the Panama Canal already and are heading into the Atlantic." Brad's grin broadened. "Tomorrow, the world as we know it will be changed permanently and irrevocably."
There was a quaver of pride in his voice.
It was a quaver well-earned. Man was about to be hoisted on his own petard. The blind worship of technology would be his undoing. And the deindustrialization cause would be advanced as never before.
Brad was a man who lived his life for the Cause. He had even changed his surname from the hideous white Anglo-Saxon "Hayward" to the more enviroconscious "Mesosphere," in honor of the late great scientist-activist Dr. Sage Carlin. In one of his many groundless theories, Carlin had claimed that methane released from overbred beef cattle was depleting the mesospheric layer of Earth's atmosphere.
In taking the name, Brad felt as if he were honoring Sage Carlin's memory. Even though lately there were rumors that Carlin's death was greatly exaggerated, Brad thought that this was neither here nor there. The fact was, Carlin-dead or alive-had cared. Brad cared, too.
He'd cared even when he'd worked at NASA as a legitimate scientist-the kind who seemed to diligently struggle at squandering all professional credibility on every half-baked, fly-by-night environmentalist scheme to come down the pike.
In the seventies, Brad had screamed about the coming Ice Age. In the eighties, it was nuclear winter. The nineties brought fresh, frightened tantrums about global warming.
That in the geologically insignificant span of twenty years he'd gone from claiming Earth would soon become a freezing ball of ice to a burning ashen cinder was perfectly acceptable in his job at NASA. Hell, most of the folks who worked there had made the same cold-to-hot journey with nary an eye blink from the higher-ups.
His performance at his space-agency job had been without a single complaint. Until one fateful day just a few short years earlier.
NASA had just landed a small probe on the surface of Mars. The pictures taken by the miniature robotic dune buggy had captivated the world.
On a tour of mission control, Congresswoman Shirley Magruder-Jacklan was impressed by the images displayed on the large suspended screens. Dull eyes earnest, she turned to her guide, the soon-to-be-unemployed Brad Hayward.
"This is amazing," Congresswoman MagruderJacklan said of the grainy pictures being broadcast from the red planet. Cameras flashed images of her for newspapers and magazines. Spools of videotape whirred for the nightly news.
"Truly amazing," she repeated. When she turned to Brad, her face was deadly serious. "Now, can your little car thingie drive on over to where our brave astronauts planted our proud American flag?"
It was the earnestness of her tone that did it. Although he was in political lockstep with everything the congresswoman stood for, her supreme ignorance in that single moment was too much for Brad to endure.
Before he knew it, he laughed right in her face.
He laughed and laughed and laughed some more, even as it was explained in hushed tones to the congresswoman that man had never set foot on Mars. He laughed as she was ushered hastily away, scowling back at her tour guide. He laughed until he cried, right up until the point he was fired.
Only then did reality set in.
As a former NASA scientist, Brad was employable in two fields: the environmental movement or the food-service industry. He chose the former.
After a quick name change and a move to the West Coast, Brad found a new home at Earthpeace. And, as luck would have it, he was blessed to be a member of the movement during its greatest hour. The moment that would get them all written up in the history books. Assuming it was even possible to print history books after the following day.
At the head of the Earthpeace conference table, Brad could barely wrangle in his idiot's grin.
"No longer will Homo sapiens rape Mother Earth for sport," he proclaimed grandly. "We're on the cusp of a great new age. Thanks to us, mankind will finally be made to understand his true place in the natural order."
Although use of the masculine was universally frowned on within the Earthpeace organization, Brad's usage here was clearly acceptable. When talking about the destruction wrought on the poor, pitiful, defenseless little blue planet, male pronouns were not just encouraged-they were mandatory.
"Nothing in the press yet?" a grossly overweight woman in a paisley dress asked, her rapid-fire voice quivering. She'd been a pop diva twenty years and two hundred pounds ago. As her weight rose, her career had fallen. Over the past two decades, she'd been forced to resort to gimmicky big-band and Spanish-language albums.
A nine-by-thirteen-inch cardboard tray filled with greasy French fries sat on the conference table before her. As she listened to Brad, the singer continuously stuffed fries into her bloated face.
"Not yet," he admitted. "The media's still treating it like the old fascist is in the hospital."
"Shouldn't we call them and tell them?" one of the men asked.
"Absolutely not," Brad stated firmly. "Anyway, he's only window dressing. The real cargo is too important to let them know about our involvement just yet. We can't risk them intercepting the Grappler before it reaches its destination."
The pop singer belched loudly. A hail of half-eaten fries splattered the table. She swept them up with greedy, fat fingers, stuffing them back in her maw.
"So what do we do now?" one of the men asked, one eye on the pop singer. She was sucking halfchewed fried potato from her chubby fingertips.
"Nothing we can do now but wait," Brad replied, shaking his head. "Except-" he threw his hands out wide, a grand expression on his beaming face-
"-this is a cause for celebration!" he yelled. "Fruitopias all around!"
And as a cheer rose up from the gathered Earthpeacers, a jubilant Brad Mesosphere marched to the minifridge that chugged away in the corner. Freon-free, of course.
INCENSE BURNED in smoldering tin dishes that resembled battered bedpans. Potpourri smells wafted from genuine Native American and Mexican clay pottery that looked to have been made with diligence by an ungifted preschooler.
The desks and chairs within the office had been recycled from the nearest landfill. To conserve water, they hadn't been rinsed off. The scent of coffee grounds, slimy banana peels and rotten eggshells filled the air.
Remo's nose was bombarded with competing noxious aromas the instant he stepped through the front door of Earthpeace's San Francisco headquarters.