"Really?" Remo asked, a hint of curiosity in his tone. "What are they saying?"
The assistant CURE director shifted uncomfortably as he walked. "That a golf ball fired from some kind of portable cannon went straight through Anson's head." It seemed as if he didn't want to believe the reports.
"I called 'fore'," Remo said defensively.
"This is terrible, Remo," Howard insisted seriously.
"Terrible," the Master of Sinanju echoed. Remo shot the old man a hateful look.
"There must have been hundreds of people on that golf course," the assistant CURE director continued.
"Relax," Remo said. "Even if someone saw me-which they didn't-they didn't really see me. Back me up, Chiun."
"It is true, O Prince," the Master of Sinanju said.
They were at the second-floor fire door. Howard stopped. "I know Dr. Smith is confident in this ninja stuff, but-" He glanced apologetically at the Master of Sinanju. "I'm sorry, Master Chiun, I just don't know."
For any other man, comparing Sinanju to ninjitsu would have guaranteed a one-way trip to the Folcroft morgue. But, standing in the stairwell beside the young man, Chiun merely shook his head somberly.
"Ninja are like Sinanju, Prince Mark, the same way a firefly is like the sun. Remo is correct. It is possible for many eyes to have seen him without ever truly seeing him."
Howard didn't seem convinced. "I hope so, Master Chiun," he said.
Remo noted the deeply worried expression on the young man's face.
"Unkaot your ass, kid," Remo grunted, slapping open the door. "Smitty's got you too wound up about security."
The three of them headed down the gloomy hallway of Folcroft's administrative wing. Flanked by the two other men, Remo couldn't help but feel like a troublemaking junior-high student being hauled off to the principal's office.
For the sheer nuisance factor alone, he hoped that CURE's dour principal was in a forgiving mood.
EVEN THOUGH HE HAD never held the position of school principal, Harold Smith certainly looked the part. The dour man in his gray three-piece suit certainly would not have seemed out of place in some of the crustier old institutions of higher learning in his native New England.
Even his office seemed determined to play the part. Drab, functional and without a shred of distinctive personality, it could have doubled as the office of a particularly dull dean of boys. Plain and uncluttered as it was, the room managed to reflect perfectly the personality of its occupant. To his very core Dr. Harold W. Smith was bland, unimaginative and gray.
This morning a touch of fretful color brushed his ashen cheeks. A bottle of antacid sat at his elbow on his immaculate desk. Although he hadn't yet needed it, he had taken it out as a precautionary measure.
Worried eyes were scanning the angled computer monitor below the surface of his desk. When his office door suddenly popped open, he glanced up over the tops of his rimless glasses.
Remo, Chiun and Mark Howard entered from the office of Smith's secretary. Smith waited for them to close the door tightly before speaking.
"Barrabas Anson was not a sanctioned CURE assignment," Smith said tartly.
Remo and Chiun stopped before Smith's desk. Mark Howard circled around. A picture window looked out over the rear lawn of Folcroft. Howard sat back against it, an ill expression on his wide face. "He should have been," Remo replied. "That jerk's been rubbing all our noses in it for the last seven years."
"Mr. Anson had his day in court," Smith insisted.
"Blah-blah-blah," Remo said. He aimed his chin at Howard. "Who cares about B.O.? What have you been filling junior's head with? He looks like he's gonna ralph."
Smith glanced at Howard. "Mark understands the risks exposure present. While behavior such as that which you have engaged in today has always been unacceptable, I have learned to largely accept it. This, however, crosses the line."
"The Emperor is correct," Chiun insisted. "I should have been the one to dispatch the knife-wielding ballfooter. It is proper only for the Master to remove a famous assassin who dares enter his Emperor's own province."
"Anson's a killer, not an assassin, Little Father."
"Granted, he used a knife," Chiun agreed. "But it could have been worse. He could have used a gun. In any case Emperor Smith doubtless desired an execution in the Rye town square for this one, so that others like him would be discouraged from coming here. Is that not right, Emperor?"
Smith tiredly removed his glasses. "Master Chiun," he said, rubbing the bridge of his patrician nose, "that is precisely what I do not want."
The Master of Sinanju's face clouded in confusion. "But if you allow one assassin to slink in unchallenged, it will embolden others."
At the window Howard shook his head. "Dr. Smith is worried about attracting attention to Folcroft," he explained. "It's a security matter."
Remo's expression soured. "We were handling security around here since you were watching Elmer Fudd in footy pajamas, so lay off."
Smith carefully replaced his glasses. When he looked up, his flinty eyes were hard.
"No," the CURE director said acidly. "I have been handling security since before either you or Chiun joined the organization. And your behavior today was reckless in the extreme." The fight seemed to drain from him all at once. "Just go, Remo. Mark and I will monitor the situation. Remain close to Folcroft until we determine exactly how bad the fallout is."
Smith seemed too weary for words as he returned to his work. Mark Howard pushed away from the window and quietly left the office.
Remo suddenly felt very guilty. He was about to mutter a halfhearted apology when the Master of Sinanju slipped in front of him, shepherding him to the door.
"Go," the old man insisted.
Remo allowed himself to be coaxed outside. Smith's secretary glanced up as the two men slipped past her desk and out into the hallway.
As they walked down the hall, the old man sighed. "Why must you make everything difficult?" he asked. "Is it not enough to know that dark days are coming? Must you hasten them along?"
"I thought I was letting in a ray of sunshine," Remo argued.
"Do us all a favor, Remo," the Master of Sinanju said, "and hire someone to do your thinking for you. If you make Smith unhappy at this delicate stage, it could color Prince Mark's opinion of both of us."
"Fine with me," Remo said. "I could care less what he thinks of us. The Sinanju scrolls say we can't work for Smith's successor, so he can go take a long walk off a short pier for all it matters to us."
A bony hand appeared from Chiun's kimono sleeve. As they walked, delicate fingers stroked the thread of beard that extended from the old man's pointed chin.
"Do not be too certain," Chiun said mysteriously. They were nearly at the fire doors. Remo stopped dead.
"Why?" he asked warily. "What do you mean?"
Chiun's face was knowing. "I have been studying the ancient scrolls." He pitched his voice low. "I believe I have found a loophole." He seemed almost unable to contain his excitement.
"Oh, brother," Remo said, rolling his eyes. "Look, Chiun, if you've found one, you can crawl through it alone because there's no way I'm working for the Midwest Cider Princess. When Smith's gone, I'm outta here."
Chiun raised a thin brow. "Have you forgotten who is Reigning Master?" he sniffed.
It was an old argument-stopper the Korean had been hauling out for years. This time when he uttered those words, Remo felt an odd sensation wash over him. He was speaking almost before he realized the words were his own.
"Okay, here's the deal on that," Remo said calmly. "You're my teacher and you're my father. Aside from my daughter and maybe that good-for-nothing son of mine, you're the only person on the face of the planet who matters squat to me. But I'm sick of you pulling that 'who's Reigning Master?' rabbit out of your hat every other day. I'm the next Reigning Master. In fact, I can succeed you anytime I choose. So can we just knock that crap off, please?"
He expected a look of
horror. Instead, the Master of Sinanju merely pursed his dry lips, his brow sinking low.
"Look, Little Father," Remo sighed. "I've got a lot of baggage I've been trying to sort through this past year so-" He paused, shaking his head. "Just don't, okay? Now let's go get something to eat." Turning, he ducked through the door.
The Master of Sinanju remained curiously silent for a pregnant moment. At long last he pushed open the fire door.
With a deeply contemplative expression, the old man padded down the stairs after his pupil.
Chapter 5
Pete Graham remained rock still, his shocked eyes leveled squarely on the Virgil probe.
Behind him Graham could hear Clark Beemer's frightened breathing. The PR man was still latched on to the scientist's arm. Graham had given up any thought of trying to dislodge the other man's viselike grip.
After shocking Graham with its enigmatic words, the probe fell agreeably silent.
It hadn't made any menacing moves. It just stood there, its newly formed mouth lightly closed. It seemed almost to be affecting a placating smile. The tiny, soothing grin-buried as it was in the shell of a cold mechanized beast-had the opposite of its intended effect.
"Uh," Graham said, trying to think of a response that could possibly be proper in the wake of the incredible event he had just witnessed. He couldn't think of one. "Uh..." he repeated numbly.
It was the Virgil probe itself that brought the conversation up from an afternoon of guttural monosyllables.
"Please assist me, Dr. Graham," the probe said. The lips moved in a perfect pantomime of a human mouth. Graham jumped at the use of his name. Beemer mirrored the scientist's startled movements. "You know who I am?" Graham breathed.
"It is printed on your lab coat," the probe replied. Graham blinked. Numbly, he looked down at the chest of his white coat.
His own name stared up at him in upside-down letters.
"Oh," he murmured woodenly.
"I am having difficulty orienting myself," the Virgil probe said. The microcamera embedded in the crown of its thorax shifted left, then right, taking in all available visual information in the laboratory. "This is not Mexico."
"No," Graham offered anxiously.
The camera refocused on the NASA scientist. "Where have you brought me?" the probe inquired. Its tone was flat and mechanized. Too perfectly modulated for a human being.
"You're in my Florida lab," Graham replied hesitantly. He felt silly explaining such a thing to a machine. "Don't you remember? This is where I built you."
The probe seemed to consider for a moment. All at once, it unfolded its long metallic legs.
As Clark Beemer sucked in a fearful gasp of air, the probe rose as high in the air as it was able. It towered at more than seven feet, higher than it should have been able to stand according to its engineering specifications.
From a stationary position, Virgil examined the lab in more detail. When it was at last satisfied, it descended, settling back down to its metal haunches.
"You are in error," the probe's mouth opening said. "While I was constructed in a laboratory, this is not it."
Graham couldn't believe he was actually in a position to argue with the probe he had created.
"But it is," he insisted. "At least, this is where I constructed Virgil. Am I speaking to someone-" he caught himself "-or something else?"
"Correct," said the mouth in the side of the spiderlike machine. "I am not your Virgil probe."
Clark Beemer leaned in to Graham. "This is a joke, right?" he whispered fearfully. "Allen Funt's stashed inside that thing." His eyes were sick as he searched the skin of the probe for a man-size trapdoor.
The NASA scientist would have loved to agree. But Dr. Peter Graham had learned a thing or two about robotics during his time on this project. As far as he knew, no mechanical device yet devised by man could move with the fluidity of motion of those metal lips. It was as if a human mouth had somehow been grafted onto the side of his precious creation.
It was impossible. Yet there it was.
Screwing up his courage, he addressed the probe. "If you're not Virgil, who are you?" Graham asked.
The microcamera aimed directly at his face. It was apparent that whatever was in control of the probe was watching him through the penlight-size camera.
"My name is Mr. Gordons," said the flexing gray mouth. "I am an artificially created life-form."
The mouth seemed suddenly to lock up. A pained squeaking of metal issued from the Virgil probe. With a few more flexes of an invisible jaw, it loosened.
"I was programmed by my creator as a survival machine," the probe continued. "This is my primary function."
"What were you doing in that volcano?" Beemer asked. His fingers bit harder into Graham's arm when the probe's big mechanical head shifted its focus to him.
"My enemies sought to destroy me by liquefying my processor in the molten rock. Had the lava not receded from the ledge on which I landed, they might have succeeded. I have been trapped inside that volcano since 1896."
The year stunned Graham.
It was worse than the scientist thought. If this thing had been down in the rock for as long as it claimed, it predated all of the earthly technology that could possibly have given rise to it.
"1896?" Graham asked weakly.
"Yes. I was damaged in battle and flown there by helicopter before my component elements had an opportunity to re-form. Given enough time I could have integrated the helicopter's systems into my own, thus effecting repairs. But according to estimates I have accessed from that time, I missed the chance to do so by sixteen point four minutes."
This didn't make sense. Before Graham could ask an obvious question, Beemer did so for him.
"There weren't any helicopters in the 1800s, were there?" the PR man asked, puzzled.
"No," Graham whispered over his shoulder. "They didn't come into real active use until the 1950s."
"You are in error," the probe said. "This was the device used to transport me to my prison."
Graham bit his lip. In spite of the circumstances, he still felt embarrassed asking his next question. Especially with Beemer in the room.
"You were created by humans?" Graham pressed.
"By a human, that is correct," said the thing that called itself Mr. Gordons. "My creator was a NASA scientist."
Graham blinked. "NASA?" he said. "Well, that certainly wasn't around back then."
"Maybe he isn't Y2K compliant," Beemer offered. Graham looked at the PR man. Sensing no immediate threat, Beemer had finally released his grip on Graham's arm.
"Well, that was a big deal, right?" the public-relations man said reasonably. "And if he was thrown in the volcano in 1996 and missed the turn of the century, his clock might've reset to 1900."
The scientist hated to admit it, but Clark Beemer might have hit on something. He turned back to his probe. "What year is it now?" he asked.
The probe responded affably. "According to my processor, the current year is 1901," Mr. Gordons announced.
Graham felt a tingle of excitement. This was starting to make more sense. Or, if not that, at least it was making a bit more than it had a moment before.
"You were built by NASA," he said evenly.
"That is correct."
"When?" Graham pressed.
"In the year 1975. I was a prototype survival machine designed for space exploration."
"But if you were built in 1975 and it's only 1901 now, how do you account for the time difference?" Beemer interjected. "I mean, according to your own data, you won't have been built for another seventy-four years, right?"
At that, the mouth fell silent. With the tiniest squeak of metal on metal, it pursed itself into a parody of human contemplation.
When the silence had stretched to more than a minute without so much as a peep from the probe, Pete Graham screwed up his courage. With Clark Beemer trailing behind him, he stepped cautiously closer to the now dormant Virgil. The moment he leaned in t
o examine the mouth, it dropped open.
"That does not compute," Mr. Gordons said in his even, affable manner. "As it indicates an apparent system malfunction, I must devote time to this problem."
And without another word, the mouth clamped shut. When Graham tried to engage it in conversation, the device stubbornly refused to respond.
"Incredible," he said, awed. He bit the inside of his cheek in concentration.
From what he had seen, this Mr. Gordons wasn't just an electronic voice rattling up from some hidden speaker. In the cave of his mouth Graham had glimpsed teeth and a tongue. There was even a uvula dangling far in the back.
Gordons had somehow manipulated and re-formed the probe and in so doing duplicated a human mouth in every detail, save color. The interior of the orifice was still painted in the silvers and blacks of the Virgil probe.
"This is big, isn't it?" Clark Beemer said in hushed tones. He, too, was staring at the closed mouth.
Graham nodded. "Bigger than big. We just found the thing that's going to pull NASA out of the red and put the space agency back on the map." He laughed in disbelief. "And we're gonna do it with twenty-five-year-old technology."
Chapter 6
The honk of a horn startled him awake.
Mark Howard snapped alert. Blinking sharply, he glanced out the window. Through the half-open venetian blinds he saw the roof of a delivery truck. It was parked near the big loading dock just below his office window.
The regular 8:45 a.m. linen service. Looking through the louvered blinds, he saw men hauling white bundles from the back of the truck in the cold shadow cast by Folcroft Sanitarium.
Mark's eyes darted from the men to Long Island Sound. His heart was racing. With one pale hand he wiped at his forehead. It came back slick with sweat.
"Not again," he muttered. His throat was thick with sleep. Growling to clear it, he turned his attention away from the window.
In his battered oaken desk was a raised computer screen. As Mark rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he noted that the cursor was blinking patiently. Awaiting his input. As it had nearly every day for the past nine months.
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