Unpopular Science

Chapter 9

Chiun observed Remo thoughtfully as they took the cleanest available taxi to the Casablanca airport. After five minutes, Remo caved. “What? What did I do?”

“I was considering that you have become soft, my son.”

“Marshmallow soft or down-comforter soft?”

“Complacent soft. You have lost your respect for danger.”

“What danger?” Remo demanded.

“Exactly! You do not see the danger that is around you every day, every minute. I cannot be your sense of caution, Remo.”

The old Korean Master spoke with such serious intent that Remo stopped to think about it. “Chiun, I am not careless.”

“Careless and incautious are not one and the same,” Chiun explained, his brow vaguely troubled. “While you have become Master of Sinanju, while you are a skilled and powerful assassin, I fear for you because of your lack of humility.”

“I’m careful.”

“Not careful enough.”

Remo shrugged, not sure what he should say. “I’ll work on it.”

“It is not a matter of actions but of attitude. You are not afraid enough.”

“Little Father, you taught me to master fear, to experience it and make use of it.”

‘Yes, but I speak now of the fear you must carry upon your person, be it nothing more than a speck of fear, a mote of fear.”

“How do I get this speck?”

Chiun looked away. “I cannot teach you how to feel, only how to process what you feel. This speck is for you to find and cultivate, but heed me in this, Remo—a speck of fear will serve you well.”

“You should have seen the thing. It was at least ten inches long,” Mark Howard said excitedly as they boarded the aircraft.

“Lucky you, you got to stay inside the nice plane. We had to go out and live it.” Remo said.

“You see any bugs?”

“The bugs decided Casablanca was too dirty. They all got grossed out and migrated to someplace more hygienic, like Sierra Leone,” Remo said.

Mark Howard wasn’t satisfied with Remo’s reaction. He had been entirely amazed by the size of the many-legged bug he had glimpsed crawling around on the tarmac. But Remo shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

Well, Remo had traveled extensively, and to some of the worst parts of the world, and had likely seen all kinds of ugly insects the likes of which Mark could only imagine. He wasn’t going to make himself look like more of a neophyte by going on about it.

Still, the image of the thing stuck in his head. He wasn’t especially creeped out by it so much as he was, well, bothered by it somehow.

This trip was turning out to be a huge yawn. He had been stuck inside this aircraft for most of a day since leaving Rye, New York, except for the endless few hours he was stuck inside the car lost in the Arizona desert near Yuma. The only interesting thing that had happened to him, other than the big bug sighting, was the glimpse of the young woman Freya on the Sun On Jo reservation.

Mark Howard concentrated on pushing away the image. Her exquisite face, barely glimpsed in the night; the shimmering of her golden hair in the lantern glow. Cripes, he was acting like a thirteen-year-old again, but the sight of her had intrigued him as no woman—

“Hey!”

Mark Howard was startled back to the here and now. Remo was shooting daggers at him with his eyes. “What?”

“Your neon sign is blinking again. Junior, only this time it reads, Hot-N-Bothered, Hot-N-Bothered,” Remo said.

Mark Howard felt the blood rise to his face.

“You better not be hot-n-bothered about what I think you’re hot-n-bothered about.”

Mark Howard was mortified and humiliated and his jaw felt wired shut.

“What has caused this stir of lasciviousness in the young prince regent?” Chiun asked curiously in Korean.

“He’s got a woman under his skin,” Remo responded.

“And you care why?”

Remo stopped glaring at Mark long enough to glare briefly at Chiun.

“Ah. His eyes have beheld the vision of the lovely young daughter of the Reigning Master of Sinanju.”

“Yes.”

Mark didn’t understand a word of the conversation but he knew what it was about. He wished the floor would spontaneously open and allow him to plummet mercifully to the earth.

“You cannot blame him,” Chiun said. “She is comely by his standards.”

“Meaning?”

“She is white, which makes her naturally unattractive, and her hair makes her appear sickly. Still, measured by the Caucasian yardstick she is quite comely.”

“What’s wrong with her hair?” Remo demanded.

“It is albinous. The most attractive hair color is a rich, dark brown or black.”

“Hey, you look in the mirror, lately? You’ve been forgetting the Grecian Formula.”

“My hair is the hair of an elderly man,” Chiun explained patiently. “Light hair makes one appear old, beyond one’s breeding seasons. Light hair on a young woman makes her appear diseased.”

“Go to hell.”

‘This is why blond-haired women are universally regarded as unattractive.”

“Really? I think I’ll get you a subscription to Maxim!”

“I mean among those with sophisticated taste in women.”

“Koreans?”

Chiun smiled. “Traditionalist Koreans.”

“Go to hell again.”

Nobody said, another word until the aircraft was over Spain.