Fool's Gold

by Warren Murphy

  So to that very day, devout Hindus were careful of stepping on mud lest they profane the only remaining son of Gint.

  "How spiritual. How beautiful," said Terri, reading the legend under the statue and smelling the incense candles.

  "The statue's got a face like a mushroom and seven tits," Remo said. "She's the ugliest thing I've ever seen."

  "How beastly you are. In the presence of such spirituality, showing how gross you are."

  Their footsteps sounded like coins dropping on the taut skin of a drumhead. The ceilings were painted with snakes devouring babies and slugs drinking from the breast of swamps. This was done in rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

  Remo noticed little bundles taped to the ceiling where the support pillars were. Every pillar had them.

  They felt wrong. He looked toward Chiun and the old Korean nodded.

  "Let's find the writing and get the hell out of here," Remo said.

  "It should be right near this temple," said Terri. "But I don't want to profane their religion."

  "The only way you can profane it is by having an honest thought," Remo said. He looked up at the bundles and he saw Chiun nod to him. They did not belong in the temple of the goddess Gint.

  Tonaka Hamamota, number one adviser to the great House of Wissex, had watched the trio enter the temple.

  He had sat quite comfortably at a distance, letting his computer watch the people. It did not tell him much about their facial features, but instead how they moved and emitted heat. The heat emissions came out on a screen, showing the coolness of the temple stones and the heat of the three bodies entering.

  Lord Wissex had assured him the three would enter and so they had, and that was all Tonaka Mamamota needed, since he could trail a target by the scent of the wax in their ears.

  Tonaka had been told that there might be danger and that he should report every step as he did it. He thought the idea of danger was ridiculous but one did as one's employer wished.

  Tonaka Hamamota wore a blue imitation cotton Sears suit with imitation silk striped tie and an imitation polyester white shirt.

  He watched as his computer screen ticked off the facts:

  Movement of trio. Males glide with the very motion of body. Woman clomps as is normal. Males seem always to have weight centered.

  Pulse. Woman normal. Males subnormal, closer to python than ape.

  Position: Males always keep female between them in protective cordon.

  Language: Female doing most of talking; apparently hostile.

  First attack: Males' movement instantaneous with explosion. Female, delayed normal reaction time. Scream.

  Terri started yelling as the tile around their feet exploded in little luminescent fragments pitting the walls with impact.

  She tried to run but felt a strong reassuring hand on her arm.

  It was Remo.

  "There's nowhere to run," he said.

  "Let me go."

  "You can't run. Those are bombs going off. The whole temple's a bomb. Look." And he pointed and she followed his finger and then saw the packages strapped to the pillars where they joined the graceful dome of the roof.

  She felt Remo pull her toward the ground. His finger touched an inlaid tile.

  "This is a bomb too," he said. "There are nothing but bombs here. We're in the middle of a bomb."

  "Oh, no," moaned Terri. She began to shake.

  "It's all right, kid," Remo said. "They're not going to kill you."

  "How do you know?"

  "You'd have been dead by now," Remo said.

  "The bombs were obvious from the beginning," Chiun said.

  "Then why did we walk in here?"

  "I didn't know who they were for," Chiun said. "It was obvious they were not part of the temple. Look at the strapping. Look at the packages. See how clean the lines are."

  "Good taste," said Remo.

  "Probably Japanese," Chiun said.

  "Definitely not Indian," Remo said.

  "It's in good taste," Chiun agreed.

  "Definitely not Indian," Remo said.

  "They're going to kill us and you're talking about design," Terri screamed.

  "If we're going to die, it's not going to hurt us to talk about design."

  "Do something," shouted Terri and Remo obligingly did a little tap dance and sang two bars from "Once Upon a Blue River, Darling."

  Not to be outdone, Chiun recited a stanza of Ung poetry.

  "That's not what I want you to do," Terri yelled.

  "Name it," said Remo.

  "Get us out of here," Terri said.

  "We could get out but you can't," said Remo. "Look at 'the windows and doors. Do you see those beautiful square lattices that look like borders?"

  Terri nodded.

  "Bombs," said Remo. "We could get out fast enough but not you."

  "You've got to protect me."

  "And we are."

  "Then do something," she said.

  "We are," Remo said.

  "You're doing nothing. You're just standing there."

  "We're waiting," Remo said.

  "For what?"

  "For what is going to come, my dear," said Chiun and suddenly there were voices in the temple. It was one voice but because of the echoes it sounded like many. It said:

  "I can kill you any time. Watch."

  Suddenly Terri's ears ached from two concussions.

  "That is an example," the voice said. "You are in a bomb I have constructed. Resistance is useless."

  "See. I told you we were in a bomb," Remo said. "Whole place is a bomb."

  "Oh, no," sobbed Terri.

  "Send the woman out to me or you will all die," said the voice.

  "What should I do?" whined Terri.

  "You could die honorably with us," said Remo, "or you could run for your life."

  "I don't want to leave you," said Terri. "But I don't want to die either."

  "Then go."

  "I'll stay," she said.

  "No, go. Don't worry about us."

  "Will you be all right?" she asked.

  "Sure. Go," said Remo.

  "I hate to leave you, Chiun," she said.

  "Ahhh, to see beauty as one's last sight is but a pleasant way to pay the debt of death that is owed from one's birth."

  "You're so beautiful," said Terri. "And you, Remo, if only you weren't so hostile."

  "So long, kid," Remo said. "See you around."

  Terri stumbled from the temple, holding her head, shielding her weeping eyes from the bright sun. She walked past the pools, following the sound of a voice that told her to keep moving.

  The voice kept repeating that when Terri came just over the little hillock facing the temple, the two inside the temple would be released unharmed.

  Terri stumbled from the temple gardens and sobbed her way beyond a little hill, where a fat Oriental with a square face, wearing a blue suit, sat in front of a little computer built into an attaché case.

  "Dr. Pomfret?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "I have receivers in the temple that capture and magnify my voice. They are smaller than a pencil dot."

  Hamamota picked up a tiny microphone, no larger than a thumbnail, and into it he spoke.

  "Now you die, Melican dogs."

  The temple of the goddess Gint went up in a mountain of pink plaster and spraying jewels. The earth shook. Terri felt her ears grow numb. The pink plaster of the temple was still coming down over the outskirts of Bombay when Terri finally got herself to look over the little hillock. Where Remo and Chiun had been was now only a large, smoldering hole. They were dead.

  Then she thought she heard them arguing from the Beyond. The voices came through the buzzing in her ears.

  "He called me an American," said Chiun.

  "No. He called you a Melican," said Remo.

  "That's how they pronounce American," Chiun said.

  "So?"

  "Would you like to be called a boy when you are a man?" said Chiun's
voice from the Beyond.

  "There's no comparison," said Remo's voice in Heaven.

  "It is bad enough being called a Chinaman. But to be called an American. That means I have those funny eyes, that sickly skin, that awful odor about the body. It means that I am of European stock, and therefore, somehow related to the French. That is beyond degradation."

  "I'm white," Terri heard Remo's voice say.

  "And don't think that has been easy on me," said Chiun.

  "And I am very proud to be an American," Remo said.

  "Compared to being French, why not?" said Chiun.

  Terri turned around. They were alive. Unscathed. And standing behind Hamamota whose eyes were open wide with amazement. He looked first at the two and then at his little computer. He punched in several commands.

  The computer immediately flashed a message back. In green luminescent letters, the computer told Hamamota: "Good for you. Once again you have succeeded. The two are dead."

  Froth formed on Hamamaota's lips. His face turned red. His eyes bulged. He punched new information into the computer.

  The information said: "Not dead. Standing behind me."

  The computer was instantaneous in its response. "Reject inaccurate information. Please check source material."

  Hamamota looked behind him again.

  "Alive," he punched into the machine.

  The computer answered: "All input accurate until last message. Must reject."

  "How did you escape alive?" asked Terri.

  But Remo and Chium were not listening to her. Chiun had seen screens like that. What he wanted to know was where was the little yellow face that ate the squares and the dots. He asked Hamamota.

  "Not that kind of computer," the Japanese said.

  "No Pac-man?" said Remo.

  "Not that kind of computer. It killed you. Why are you not dead?"

  "Does it do horoscopes?" asked Remo.

  "I am a Leo," said Chiun. "That's the best sign. Remo is a Virgo. He doesn't know that but I do. He couldn't help that anymore than he could help being white."

  "You dead," yelled Hamamota angrily. "Why you not dead? Why you standing here?"

  "Maybe it has Missile Command?" said Remo. "Where's the joystick for shooting missiles?"

  "No Missile Command. This assassin computer. Best in world. Number one."

  "How the world demeans glory. They have made a game of assassination. The profession of assassin is now reduced to an arcade game," Chiun said.

  "You dead," yelled Hamamota.

  "Does it have blackjack?" asked Remo.

  "You bombed," said Hamamota. "I bombed you."

  "It did work the bombs, Little Father," Remo said to Chiun.

  "Still a game," Chiun said.

  "Heeeeeyahhhh," yelled Hamamota and leaped into a martial arts position, hissing like an animal.

  "What's that?" asked Remo.

  "Another game," said Chiun in disgust.

  "You die. Heeeeeeyahhhhh," screamed Hamamota, thrusting a bladelike hand toward Remo's neck.

  The hand bounced back with four broken bones. The neck didn't move.

  "Could I set off a bomb with that thing?" asked Remo.

  "Pigs use booms," Chiun said. "Chinamen use them. They invented gunpowder because they lacked internal discipline."

  Hamamota's hand hung limply by his side. His eyes bulged with hate and from his very spine, he threw a kick out at the head of the aged Korean. Chiun walked by and went to the computer inside the attaché case.

  "I have seen advertisements for a boom where there is a bucket to catch the boom and that is how you score."

  "I don't think this is that one, Little Father," said Remo, "because the temple really blew up."

  "Maybe there are controls for catching the booms too. Does this do catching and if so, where does it score?" asked Chiun.

  Hamamota lay on his side, his back thrown out of joint, his striking hand limp, exhaustion and pain on his face.

  "Listen to me, fat thing," said Chiun. "Does this have a scorer? Can we blow Calcutta up from here? If we can, how many points do we get?"

  "Why would you get points for blowing up Calcutta?" asked Remo.

  "Have you ever seen Calcutta?"

  "No," said Remo.

  "Go there sometime. You would get not only points but a blessing for it. One of the truly bad places in the world," Chiun said.

  "Baghdad is bad," said Remo.

  "Baghdad has beauty," said Chiun.

  "Baghdad has Iraqis," said Remo.

  "No place is perfect," said Chiun, "except Sinanju."

  "How many points for Baghdad?" Remo asked Hamamota. The Japanese wriggled onto his belly. Inch by painful inch, he crawled toward Remo and Chiun. When he got to Remo's shoes, he opened his mouth to bite and Remo lifted his foot and stepped down with one precise step, separating Hamamota into two parts.

  Terri fainted.

  "See if you can do Calcutta," said Remo.

  "I can't do Calcutta," said Chiun.

  "Why not?"

  "No joystick. I think this fat Jap probably threw it away."

  By the time Terri recovered, Remo and Chiun had carried her back to the temple ruins and were digging around for the Hamidian inscription.

  "You didn't have to kill him," she said to Remo.

  "What should I have done?"

  "Rehabilitate him," said Terri.

  "Right," said Chiun. "Correct." And then in Korean he said to Remo: "What is the matter with you? You would argue with a stone wall. Do you really think this woman knows what she is talking about?

  "Thank you," said Terri, sure the kindly old Korean was explaining decency to his rude and crude student.

  "You're welcome," said Chiun to Terri, and then to Remo: "See how easy it is when you treat idiots like idiots."

  "I just want you to know this," Terri told Remo. "There has been death and destruction this day and all you could think about was playing games with human lives. You kill without remorse or even anger. I could understand anger. But nothing? Nothing? Nothing?"

  "Would it make you feel better if I hated everybody I kill?" said Remo. "You want hate?"

  "Moron," said Chiun in English.

  "I don't know why you put up with him," Terri told Chiun.

  "Neither do I," said Chiun.

  Chapter Eight

  Dr. Harold W. Smith waited in the headquarters of CURE, sitting atop staffs he could not reach, a network unconnected to anything, running dummy corporations and fronts all operating without purpose.

  Through the years, he alone had set up these groups to create a network of people gathering and dispensing information, all them helping, without knowing it, to help CURE fight crime and to keep America alive.

  Only Smith, each president, and CURE's lone killer arm knew what CURE was. Clerks gathering information on illegal trucking and fraud never knew for whom they really worked. Government agencies with vast sprawling budgets never knew how much of their workforce actually worked for that secret organization set up in Rye, New York, behind the facade of the sanitarium called Folcroft.

  Smith had prepared for everything and he had not prepared for this. He was not even sure how long the networks would keep working or what they would do or if they would just gather, organize, penetrate, and then do it all over again because the information just wasn't being used.

  He didn't know. Only the computers would know, and his computers' brains were as blank as a baby's at birth.

  For the first time since those murky days when a desperate president had called on him to set up this organization, Harold W. Smith was out of touch with it all.

  For the first time, there were no two dozen problems to be juggling at one time.

  For the first time, there was only that blank computer terminal, with the lights flashing meaningless symbols.

  And suddenly Harold W. Smith found himself doing something he had not done since grade school when he had finished reading Peter Rabbit ahead of the rest o
f the class. He was doodling with a pencil. He was drawing pictures.

  There was a box inside a box inside a box.

  He looked at it a moment and then he knew what he would do. Trying to track down the missing computer records had failed. There had been no response.

  But if he set up just the sort of illegal operation that activated the CURE network? Then when it latched on to him, he could send Remo up through the network....

  The pencil dropped on the desk. So Remo could go up through the networks and then what? None was connected to any other and Smith was disconnected from the whole mess. He was alone and in this aging part of his life, when the body stopped responding to the commands of the mind, he was becoming useless.

  And then the telephone rang.

  It was the technician in the new headquarters in St. Maarten. They had received a strange message several days after the failed transmission from someone. Would Smith be interested?

  "Absolutely. I want to know everything about the message, especially where it originates," said Smith.

  "I'm sorry, sir, but we didn't get that. Just somewhere in the western part of your country."

  "All right. What does it say?" Smith asked.

  "It says 'Offer interesting. Will only deal gross.' "

  "Deal gross?"

  "That's it, sir."

  "Did the sender mean big or large or ugly or what?" Smith asked.

  "I don't know. Only deal gross, it says."

  "Who will only deal gross?"

  "He didn't send the message properly," the technician said. "We didn't get a name or frequency or anything."

  "All right. We're going to transmit again."

  "During a storm again, sir?"

  "No. Continuously. Around the clock," said Smith. "Sun and rain, storm and clear. Sent it all over."

  "I certainly hope the stockholders of Analogue Networking Inc. don't find about this, sir," said the technician.

  "Why should they?" asked Smith. What was this? Some kind of blackmail?

  "It would just be terribly costly," the technician said.

  "That's right. And I'm telling you to do it and don't you worry about the stockholders," Smith said. "That is not your concern. You understand?"