Death Check

by Warren Murphy

  Attack is instinctive, triggered by the spinal column, its message bypassing the brain and moving directly to the muscles. But calling off an attack? That is an act of intellect, belonging to the brain, and the brain was not swift enough to stop Remo’s hand, to relax the braided rope muscles of his arm, to soften the intensity of these gently curled fingertips which could smash cinder blocks into powder.

  Remo’s brain did the best it could in one-fiftieth of a second. It changed the course of his hand one inch. The hand spear slid over the hip bone of his opponent, past the vulnerable kidney, and crashed into a wooden coat rack standing alongside his assailant. Fingers hit wood with the crack of a china dish splintering on a stone floor. The top half of the coat rack paused drunkenly, then fell to the floor, its two-inch thick wooden support split cleanly by the killing power of Remo’s hand.

  His opponent looked at the coat rack. Remo looked at his assailant for the first time and a saw a husky, middle-aged man wearing the classic judogi, a black sash wrapped low around his waist. He had a complexion like oiled olives. Dark rings surrounded his eyes, seeming even darker in contrast to his highly glossed bald head. It was Ferrante.

  Remo’s left hand snaked out and snared Ferrante’s right hand. His thumb insinuated itself into a ganglion of nerves on the back of the hand, just alongside the base of the index finger. The move brought excruciating pain and immediate submission.

  The man screamed. “Stop it. I’m Ferrante.” His eyes met Remo’s in pained, embarrassed truth.

  Remo squeezed once more, then released the hand. “What the hell does that make you? The mugger in residence?”

  “I wasn’t going to hit you,” Ferrante said, rubbing his damaged hand. “I just wanted to see how good you are. After yesterday.” He looked at the fractured coat rack. “You’re good.”

  Remo backed away to let the man move from the corner behind the door. He breathed deeply, slowly, to drain the tension, to allow his body to back off the heroic blast of adrenalin that had flooded his muscles.

  Well, that was it. If the word came, Ferrante would die in the gymnasium of a broken neck, suffered in an incorrect judo fall. Remo would take great pleasure in bouncing him off a wall.

  Ferrante walked slowly back to his desk, still rubbing his hand, eyes on Remo, spewing apologies. Remo began to feel sorry for the karate buff, for his pain, for his embarrassment. He wondered what Ferrante would think if he saw the pornographic photos of himself wearing only the top of his judo garb. If he hadn’t seen them already.

  Ferrante was still talking, still apologizing. “Look, it was stupid. How about if we forget it happened, and start all over? You’re probably wondering why you’re here. What we do here.”

  Remo grunted. He wasn’t ready to forgive and forget yet.

  “What we do here is study the mind. How it works. Each of us has a different discipline. Mine is biofeedback. Basically that means using the pain-pleasure principle to train people to regulate their involuntary body functions. For instance, we’ve had some great success in training people to slow their pulse rate. If their rate goes too high, they receive a small electric shock. As their pulse rate drops toward the goal, they receive a pleasurable electronic impulse.”

  “What good is it?” Remo asked.

  “Well, medically, it’s very important. We could help save lives of people who are troubled with heart irregularities. Asthmatics could learn to will their way out of serious breathing attacks. Psychosomatic illnesses could virtually be wiped out.” He was warming to his subject now.

  As he talked on, Remo thought that Chiun should have been sent here to investigate this place. The aged Korean with his fishheads and rice and Zen could give all these big brains a run for their money. During those long training sessions, he remembered seeing Chiun slow his heart beat until it was almost imperceptible, his breathing rate until he appeared to be dead. Chiun had told Remo that Chiun’s father could stanch the flow of blood by thinking about it. “The mind,” he said. “You cannot control the body until you control the mind.”

  “Where did you learn to do it?” Ferrante intruded on Remo’s thoughts.

  “Do what?”

  “The business with those shits out in the courtyard.”

  “Around. Correspondence courses. A one-hour workout every month whether I want to or not. Helps keep me in trim.”

  Ferrante had recovered his poise now. Still wearing the incongruous judo outfit, he was very much the world-renowned scientist.

  He showed Remo the equipment he worked with, and Remo thought that scientific equipment everywhere on every project is probably interchangeable. These fakers probably trade it around among themselves like used books. There was a chair with a hand grip through which a minor electric shock passed into the subject if he failed to respond and another helmet, like Schulter’s, through which pleasurable waves passed by induction into the brain.

  Ferrante was offering to test Remo. Well, I owe him one. I’ll give him something to chew on. He sat in the chair and his resting pulse rate was sixty-eight. If the rate went up, Ferrante said, he’d get a slight shock through the hand grip. A down rate would bring a pleasure impulse through the helmet he placed over Remo’s head.

  Ferrante set a metronome at sixty-five beats per minute. “That’s the goal,” he told Remo, “but don’t be disappointed if you don’t make it. Hardly anyone does.”

  The metronome was ticking, Ferrante was holding Remo’s wrist in a running check on his pulse, and Remo was remembering the trick Chiun had taught him. Set up your own rhythm, wipe out external impulses, speed up your breathing pattern to match the desired heart rate, and let the hyper-ventilation of the lungs slow the heart by flooding the blood with oxygen.

  “Ready?” Ferrante asked. “I’ll call out your heart rate as we go along so you can try to adjust.”

  “How bad’s the shock?” Remo asked. “I’m afraid of electric chairs.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Ferrante said. “More like a buzz than a real shock. Start… now.”

  The metronome was clicking its sixty-five beats per minute and Remo tuned his breathing pattern in to it.

  “Sixty-eight,” Ferrante called. Remo quietly snorted his breath in and out.

  “Sixty-six.”

  Remo closed his eyes to the metronome and blanked the sound of its rhythms out of his mind. He chose a new lower rhythm, and adjusted his breathing to it

  “Sixty-four.” Ferrante was delighted. Remo breathed.

  “Sixty.”

  “Fifty-nine.”

  Remo decided to call a halt when he had dropped his heart rate down to forty-two. Ferrante didn’t know whether to be delighted or upset, or whether he had been cheated.

  “That’s incredible,” he said. “I never saw anything like that.”

  “I told you, I’m afraid of electric chairs. And I’ve got a low tolerance of pain.”

  And then there was Ratchett. Remo never had a chance to figure out what Ratchett did, or how to get to him, because Ratchett refused to open the door to his cottage which, unlike the other top staff, he used only for an office, preferring to live in his eggshell home a few hundred yards away.

  “Go away,” he shouted. “I don’t like you.”

  “I thought you wanted to see me,” Remo told the closed door.

  “If I never see you, it will be too soon. Go away.”

  “Must I assume, Doctor Ratchett, that you don’t like me?”

  “You will be well within the limits of possibility, Mister Pelham, if you assume that I loathe you. Now go away before I call a cop. One of your own will know how to deal with you.”

  Remo turned and walked away. Ratchett too would be easy if the call came. He did not realize that someone else would issue the call for Ratchett before CURE did.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LATER THAT DAY, THE STAFF department heads of Brewster Forum had held their regular weekly meeting in Brewster’s office. Dr. Deborah Hirshbloom was absent.


  Ferrante was talking about the new director of security. “So basically, he’s a coward. Terribly afraid of pain. Just the threat of the electric shock produced an incredible swing in his pulse rate.”

  He sat down. Abram Schulter’s chuckle broke the silence. “Inadequate data, Professor Ferrante. Incorrect analysis of the inadequate data. Mr. Pelham is fearless. Cold blooded! In brain wave analysis, he had absolutely no reaction to any of the external stimuli. None at all.”

  “Probably,” Ratchett snarled, “you failed to have the machine plugged in. Did either of you consider that Pelham’s intelligence is probably just too low to respond adequately to stimuli which is emotionally charged, but also intellectually powerful?”

  “Is that your feeling?” Boyle asked. “That Pelham is of low intelligence?”

  “Of course,” Ratchett said. “Isn’t it obvious? And think of his performance out in the courtyard with that awful gang. Is that a sign of intelligence?”

  Boyle smiled. “I might suggest that there is more intelligence involved in chasing them away than there is in calling them here.”

  Ratchett flushed. Boyle went on. “I would say Mr. Pelham’s intelligence is extremely high. He is also very devious and suspicious. He answers a question with a question. It’s a yid trick — excuse me, Abram — but it’s also the sign of a man used to intellectual sparring, who always looks for a quid before giving away a quo.”

  Nils Brewster listened quietly through all this, sucking on his pipe, his hands resting on his corpulent stomach, his nose encased in more bandage than was really necessary. If Brewster had a secret for his success, it was this: his ability to dominate a group, keep them splintered and leaderless and unable to challenge his authority. He finally spoke.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose that settles it. Our new policeman is either very smart or very stupid. He is either a coward or absolutely fearless.” He looked at all of them and sneered. “Another victory for intellectual analysis.”

  “This sounds curiously like the argument about whether a shark is brave, because he will attack anything no matter how big, or cowardly, because he prefers to feed off the crippled, the sick and the dying. Or is a lion clever, as he shows himself to be in his stalking of prey, or stupid, as he indicates by his irrational behavior when caged in a zoo?

  “The fact is, as all of you should know by now, that the shark is neither brave nor cowardly. And the lion is neither clever nor stupid. They exist outside of these concepts. They are instinctual and those words are meaningless when applied to them. Did it ever occur to any of you that perhaps our tests are meaningless for Mr. Pelham, because they are designed for normal human beings? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Mr. Pelham is like an animal, showing behavior patterns that once we would characterize as intelligent, another time as stupid; one time as brave, another time as cowardly? Did it ever occur to you that Dr. Pelham might be a creature of instinct or a human being programmed to act as a creature of instinct? And that to study him and understand him, we must approach him as we would approach a beast of the field?

  “Did any of that ever occur to any of you geniuses?”

  He sat back and occupied himself with his pipe and with being Nils Brewster. No one else spoke. He puffed rapidly on his pipe, satisfied that he had again won the day, and then went on:

  “Frankly, I don’t know why any of us care about this Remo Pelham. I surely don’t. But — just academically of course — I think he is perhaps best measured against the standards of instinct. Through his unconscious. It would seem to be the province of Dr. Hirshbloom. I suggest we just forget him, and let him go on doing whatever it is a policeman does around here. Leave him for Dr. Hirshbloom if she’s interested.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BUT IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT Dr. Hirshbloom did not wish to deal with the American. The new Brewster Forum bobby showered the little Hebrew wench with the typical colonial effusiveness that Americans consider charm, and civilized people understand as undue familiarity.

  Geoffrey Hawkins, Brewster Forum sky-diving instructor, and former subaltern of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, refused to bestow the recognition of a glance upon either his pupil or that incredible American who insisted upon trying to make a date with her.

  Hawkins sat in the Piper Cub, his parachute a cushion behind him and his legs stretched across the width of the small single-engine plane.

  It was his job, a labor for daily purse, to instruct any staff members of the Forum who wished to parachute in the art of parachuting. Fortunately, that incredible motley crew of the gross technological giant that George III had allowed to wend its crude way into independence, dared not suffer Hawkins’ explicit and daily disdain.

  Only the Israeli girl, who undoubtedly had to continue her training, participated in the sky diving. Which was rather a bit of all right, since she had the decency not to attempt a conversation with Geoffrey Hawkins. Either she knew her place, understood decorum, or had nothing to say. Which for a Jew was an incredible virtue. Unfortunately so few other people shared her ability to refrain from conversation.

  Like that typically German bore, who pretended to be of another nationality. He had given Hawkins $5,000 to see that Remo Pelham did not land alive. But then he had insisted upon trying to justify it to Hawkins.

  Geoffrey Hawkins needed no justification. One had to live. And anyway, it would not be murder. Murder was when you deprived an Englishman of life. Survival was when you took life from an American. And public health was when one removed Irishmen.

  It was a bit of a shame however that this Pelham was not Australian. Then one would know that one was removing a criminal. Or the seed of a criminal, which was the same thing anyway.

  Even in Britain, the gentry had lost sight of what they were. The world had gone mad and Britain had gone mad with it. This pathetic affection and respect for America, a nation which had once had an Irish President. Scots walking around like human beings. Welshmen knighted every day. And all of them calling themselves British. When only Englishmen were English!

  The sun had set on the soul of the British empire.

  “Hey, buddy. How do you fix this thing?”

  It was the American. He was going to jump from 13,000 feet, free fall for one minute, then open his chute and land. He had never been in a parachute before.

  Five thousand dollars for this? Geoffrey Hawkins could earn his money by allowing this colonial bumpkin just to attempt free fall. But that would not be thorough. Thorough was cutting the leg straps under the leather joints so that when the chute opened, if it opened, it would rise from the shoulder harness and Remo Pelham would keep going down, out of his chute, to the ground.

  “Hey, buddy. How do you get this thing on?”

  Geoffrey Hawkins turned to the financial pages. If one could properly invest one’s $5,000, one could transform it into a rather considerable amount.

  “Hey. You with the mustache and the paper. How does this thing buckle?”

  Imperial Chemical Industries was up. Good. If one invested in Imperial Chemical Industries, one could not only help civilized industry but oneself. It was a good investment for oneself.

  Finally, the Jewess helped him. No character, thought Hawkins. She had refused to talk to the American, had turned away from him, had ignored his blandishments and his insipid pleading, but now she turned to help him with the chute. Leg straps, shoulder straps, the rip cord ring, proper harness position.

  When done, she turned away again. “Thirteen thousand feet,” she said to Hawkins.

  “Umm,” he replied, because as jump instructor, he had to.

  “We’re ready,” she said. The soon-to-be-dead American sat beside her.

  The Germans had a point. But they were so crude about it. If one were to strip a German to his soul, one would achieve the essence of gauche. Even the way that Hun had slipped the envelope to Geoffrey Hawkins. As if he were reaching surreptitiously into Hawkins’ privates.

  “Yessir, this is going to
be fun,” said the American. His brown eyes were shining. His face was shaved of hair. He would clunk like a pinball machine on the Virginia countryside. He would tilt in all directions.

  The engines revved, groaning for power, and the light plane shook.

  Her Majesty’s forces, according to the Times, were still in Aden by the Persian Gulf. Lucky Aden. But this was America which had so stubbornly insisted upon going it alone and was paying for it daily.

  The Jewess had finally relented. She was explaining something to the American. Hawkins listened from behind the Times.

  “The plane is going to 13,000 feet. It’s a one-minute free fall. You pull your cord immediately. Just follow me. I’ll make sure your cord is pulled. You’re very stupid trying this the first time.”

  “Listen, sweetheart, don’t worry about me.”

  “You are incredibly stupid.”

  “This was the only way I could get to talk to you.”

  “As I said, you are incredibly stupid.”

  The two were yelling now, to overcome the motors.

  “I want to talk to you,” the American said.

  “Your leg straps are too loose.”

  “When can we get together?”

  “I’m busy this year. Try me next year at the same time.”

  Suddenly her voice called out, “Mr. Hawkins! Who gave him this chute?”

  She was doing it again. Talking to Geoffrey Hawkins without being addressed first. He ignored her.

  “Will you put down that paper? You can’t let this man jump in this chute.”

  Put down the paper? What gall.

  Suddenly the dark columns of small type disappeared.

  The paper went flying. It had been ripped out of his hands by the American.

  “I beg your pardon,” Geoffrey said in his most disdainful manner, calculated to set the American cringing in apologies.