No Contest

“Okay,” Sarah said through the small opening she left in the zipper. “Don’t be afraid. Here it comes.”

The bird wasn’t afraid. When the shotgun blasted, it didn’t even flinch.

When the brave young woman and the grim head of security emerged from the trees, they were greeted by a crowd of patients and staff standing at the windows inside the sunroom. They had heard the shotgun.

Sarah Slate, purposeful but unsmiling, raised the plastic body bag. The patients buzzed. A few clapped. A few of them wandered outside, feeling their freedom again.

Sarah avoided them all, making her way to the private wing of the sanitarium with her grim prize.

Harold W. Smith and his assistant entered the room feeling uncomfortable. The track-hung walls between the suites had been opened, and now Mark’s and Sarah’s rooms were a single home shared by them. The coziness of her small decorating touches and the intimacy of their relationship made Smith uncomfortable.

At their arrival the big bird winged off a chair back to Sarah Slate, who was sitting on a small couch. She coddled it in her arms and it burrowed into her chest as she stroked its domed head.

Smith sat and watched her soothe the creature tenderly. The bird looked as if it needed nursing. It was gaunt, its purplish feathers ragged, and its left foot in a swath of bandages.

“Can I hear it?” Smith asked after the bird calmed down.

“Tell Dr. Smith,” Sarah suggested.

The bird glared at Smith, then at Howard.

“Give her a minute,” Sarah said. “She’s a little spooked. Be forewarned—she’s fond of dirty limericks.”

“Why do you think it was saying his name?” Mark asked, deliberately avoiding the name himself. They had agreed not to prompt the bird.

“Even the patients heard it. I heard it myself. She enunciates well,” Sarah explained.

“But will she say it now?” Smith asked.

“What? Chiun?” the bird asked.

Smith stared at it.

“Ask pretty,” the bird said.

“That did sound like his name—” Smith started.

“Ask pretty!”

“Say the name again. Please,” Smith said.

“What, Chiun?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Obvious she’s well-trained,” Howard observed. “But is she really saying ‘Chiun’? Not ‘Chewing’? Not ‘Chin’? Not something else?”

“Not ‘chewing’ not ‘chin’ not something else,” the bird ranted. “Chiun! Chiun! Chiun!”

“It’s mimicry talents are amazing,” Dr. Smith admitted. “Chiun could have a pet, one we don’t know about. But how did she find her way here?”

“She’s a hyacinth macaw, right?” Mark asked. “I’ve never heard of them having especially good senses of loyalty or tracking, especially if she has never been to Folcroft before.”

“Right,” Dr. Smith agreed. “The instinct to return to a former home is one thing. Tracking a human being to a strange location is entirely different and much less explicable.”

“I assume you’ve never known Chiun to have a giant parrot in his suite?” Sarah asked.

“No.”

Mark slowly knelt by the coffee table where the bird had been perched among the remainders of a bag of trail mix. He reached out his hand. The parrot hopped onto the table and cocked its head. Mark touched the top of its head, just above its huge and woeful-looking black beak. He stroked it gently.

The bird hopped on one foot to the edge of the table and cocked its head over the side, looking at the brace that still constricted Mark’s wounded foot. Then it looked at Mark, cocked its head under his fingertips and waggled its own bandaged foot.

“Birds of feather!” It laughed uproariously.

“Oh, my God.” Sarah pressed her fingertips to her lips.

Mark Howard took his hand away. “That doesn’t sound like mimicry.”

Dr. Smith shook his head, but said nothing. It had not sounded like mimicry to him, either. It sounded like creative word play. That took intelligence.

Parrots were supposed to be very smart, but no animal was that smart.

He carefully reached his hand out, as well.

“Eek! Get thee behind me, Satan!” the bird shrieked at him, and Smith froze. The bird stared hard at him, then threw back its head in gales of abrasive laughter.

Smith grew red faced.

“It’s a joke!” The bird was suddenly on Smith’s lap, rubbing its head against his chest. “Get over it!”

“Yes. I will. I will get over it.”

“Sheesh.” The parrot raised its wings for a moment. They were incredibly large and majestic inside the walls of the hospital suite. With one flap it was back into Sarah Slate’s lap. “Sheesh” the bird commented again.

“We’ll contact Chiun,” Dr. Smith said, ostensibly to Sarah, but he was watching the bird. “He’s in Australia with—”

“Remo?” the bird asked.

“Yes,” Smith answered the parrot in a level voice. “I guess that clears up my doubts about her really saying ‘Chiun,’” Mark stated.

“Australia?” the bird asked. “Remo? Chiun? Australia?”

“Yes. They are in Australia.”

The bird settled into Sarah’s lap, cocking its head to either side, hunching down as if worried. They waited for it. They were all expecting another revelation when it spoke next.

“There once was a young man named Enis,” the bird said miserably. “Who was blessed with an oversize—”