Unpopular Science

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.

Chapter 10

The cinderblock walls had been repainted with the same high-gloss white paint every summer for twenty-seven years. When the afternoon sun angled in through the big round windows, the corridor became a sea of glaring light that forced most of the students to put on sunglasses in the late afternoon between classes. Looking west down the corridor, toward the language-arts wing, it was impossible to see faces.

A verbal alert system had spontaneously developed. Like the warning barks of prairie dogs, the high-school students up-hall began calling down-hall.

“Goodwin coming!”

“Goodwin!”

“Goodwin!”

A flock of varsity cheerleaders skipped into the nearest classroom, skirls rising just enough to reveal their school-board-sanctioned thong panties. Every freshman and sophomore flattened against the wall and stared at his or her feet. Even the knot of senior girls, furtively planning a hazing ceremony for the junior j girls, hastily gave way to Goodwin.

Goodwin came, his footsteps shaking the hall, his shadow gigantic in front of him. He was vaguely satisfied with the performance of the student body. Somehow they always knew when he was angry and needed his space.

At the moment he was extremely angry, and when his eyes fell on the person who had made him angry, he became angrier.

The jerk kid was standing there talking to his girlfriend as though he hadn’t even heard the warnings. He had his back to Goodwin. Nobody turned their back on Neil Goodwin!

“Hey, you! Fast!”

Jack Fast glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, Neil. Be with you in a second.”

The skinny kid with the sun-bleached crew cut turned back to his girlfriend and continued his conversation. The girlfriend giggled.

“Hey, Fast Fucker, I’m talking to you!”

Jack Fast stopped and, without hurrying up about it, turned around. “What’s the problem, Neil?”

“Yes, Mr. Goodwin, what is the problem?”

Goodwin was startled at the appearance of Mr. Cescepi at his shoulder. Dean Cescepi was the one guy in the entire school who could intimidate Neil Goodwin.

‘This is between him and me. Dean,” Goodwin explained.

“Really? The last time you told me that was just before you slugged Tom Newton in the stomach.”

“You can’t prove I did that,” Goodwin declared.

“But I know you did,” Dean Cescepi said, then gave Jack the once-over. “Mr. Fast is a little big for you, isn’t he, Goodwin? Don’t you usually sucker punch kids half your size?”

Goodwin simmered and clenched his fists at his sides.