Warren Murphy: Terminal Transmission

"Will I ever? You went off with her for a long weekend. Next thing we hear, she's pregnant and you're picking out baby clothes."

Chiun winced. "It is well known that Cheeta had been trying to conceive for many years before I entered her life."

"Yeah. She told every live mike in the Western hemisphere."

"It is not, as is commonly believed, her husband's fault."

"Which? That she couldn't have a kid or that she did?"

"The former. In our brief dalliance together, I told Cheeta of my feelings toward her and she of her disappointment in her husband's inability to fulfill her."

Remo looked skeptical. "So you fulfilled her?"

"I sensed in her an imbalance, which prevented her womb from fruiting with a proper child."

"Yeah . . . ?"

"And I assisted in correcting this."

"How, Master Chiun?" asked Smith, leaning forward in his chair.

"Wait a minute!" said Remo. "Maybe we're better off not knowing."

"It was a simple matter of diet," Chiun explained. "I told Cheeta that she needed to eat the whites of duck eggs boiled in rice four times a day."

"Sounds like an old wive's tale to me," Remo said.

"It is a remedy that goes back many generations and never has been known to fail, ignorant one," sniffed Chiun.

"So you didn't make it with Cheeta, after all?"

"Remo! My love for Cheeta is too pure to be sullied by such things. Besides, were I the father of the . . . female, it would not be female, but male. I know how to direct the correct seed to its proper destiny."

Chiun glared at Remo pointedly. Remo frowned. He had a daughter he had not seen in years, whom the Master of Sinanju believed would-and should-have been a boy if Remo had paid more attention to what he was doing with the mother rather than enjoying it.

"Look, there's nothing wrong with baby girls," Remo said hotly.

"Except that they are always the first to be sent home to the sea and cannot be trained in Sinanju," Chiun returned.

"Because no one ever tried," Remo snapped.

"And no one ever will. Especially you, who are not equal to the demands of Masterhood and may never be."

Remo turned to Smith. "Let's change the subject. Are the networks back on?"

"Yes. The Canadians shut off the pirate transmitter and are in the process of dismantling the-er-nun. Although I am still unclear on how power was supplied to such an enormous device."

"Forgot to tell you. Remember the missing car batteries? We found a cave filled with them, all hooked up together. There must have been thousands of them. Enough to do the job, ridiculous as it sounds."

Smith frowned. "It is not so farfetched. I recall now an Air Force laser device housed in a remote test facility that had to be powered by great numbers of interconnected auto batteries. It should have occurred to me before. Obviously, Feldmeyer was forced to scrounge for replacements as the supply was taxed under continual broadcast demands."

"So we're back on the air and things are squared away with the Canadians?"

"Yes. But it was an object lesson for society. Our reliance on television, for news as well as entertainment, has taken on the proportions of a shared national addiction. I've recommended to the new President that he lay this problem before the American people as a challenge for the next century."

"Think he'll go along?"

"No," said Harold Smith glumly. "He is a baby boomer."

"Pah," spat Chiun. "Do not speak that word in my presence again. I am done with babies forever. And with Cheeta Ching, the fickle."

And Remo laughed. A huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Turning to the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Care to tell us about the Chiun from the Bible?"

"When someone informs me why the readers of alleged news are called anchors."

Remo and Harold Smith exchanged blank looks.

When the answer was not found in the CURE computer, the Master of Sinanju stalked from the room, a wraith in crimson silks.

Remo shrugged, indicated Smith's TV set and wondered, "Anything good on?"