Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  Harold W Smith was lurking on the net.

  As the international infobahn crept across the face of the globe like an alien nervous system, a new lexicon evolved to capture the uncharted reality of what some called cyberspace. People posted notes on the net, flamed one another in anger and, in an effort to impart feeling to what had formerly been known as cold type, created symbols known as emoticons-like smilies and frownies-the better to make electronic conversation convey exact shades of meaning only spoken words could.

  One coinage of the electronic age was lurker. A lurker was someone who browsed the nets and bulletin boards anonymously but never posted messages. Lurkers just lurked and watched, unsuspected.

  Harold Smith might be said to be the first lurker in the history of the Internet.

  Back when the net was limited to a small handful of computers in government and educational hands, Harold Smith lurked, unknown and unsuspected, watching the message traffic and growing aware that the day was coming when the average American would own a home computer and do the same.

  Harold Smith feared that day. Not that he thought it would be entirely a bad thing. If it involved the average American citizen, it would offer a mixture of good and bad.

  No, the information explosion was feared by Harold Smith because of the enormous drain it would place on CURE resources. CURE operated on several levels. Wiretapping and other illegal information gathering was part of its intelligence-gathering outreach. So were human intelligence plants. CURE had agents in everything from the National Security Agency to the Department of Agriculture. All reported by mail or telephone or dead drop-or most recently, by E-mail. None knew they worked for Harold W Smith, although many thought they worked for the CIA.

  Data constantly flowed into Harold Smith's mainframes. Data that had to be stored, scanned, evaluated and disposed of. Most were erased as not mission specific. Some were filed for future action or investigation. A few were acted upon.

  The proliferation of home computers and electronic exchanges of all kinds meant an entire domain of accessible data had come into existence for Harold Smith to patrol.

  Thus, he lurked, unsuspected. He had recently created an electronic-mail address that couldn't be traced back to Folcroft Sanitarium or himself. Through this, an increasingly large number of field contacts reported to him.

  Early on Smith had written programs whose sole function was to troll the net for events or people. Global searches were executed on all incoming data so that buzzwords captured pertinent data for review.

  But not all the buzzwords in the universe could patrol the net in search of CURE-critical events. Only a discerning mind could perform that function.

  So Harold W. Smith lurked.

  He skipped the news groups. They were the electronic equivalent of graffiti, Smith had long ago discovered. Most might as well have been scrawled in crayon on sheets of brown wrapping paper.

  But all sorts of news traveled the fiber-optic route these days. Especially local news that never went national.

  Smith was scanning these. He had a particular and unusual way of dealing with vast blocks of trivia that might contain a kernel of importance. It was an adaptation of the primary speed-reading method whereby the reader ran his eye down the middle of the page at a constant speed and absorbed the gist of the text semisubconsciously.

  Smith found speed-reading useless for absorbing important documents, but for trolling the net it was more than adequate.

  Certain key words jumped out at him whenever he did this. His eyes saw everything, but his alert brain only picked up on the key words. In a way Smith functioned like a human data processor when he did this.

  It was while scanning a continuous scroll of random news reports that Smith's eyes alighted on a word that caused him to instinctively reach for the scroll-lock key.

  The screen froze the amber blocks of text on the buried screen.

  It had happened so fast Smith's brain hadn't quite registered the word that caused the reflex action to kick in.

  He stared at the word now. It appeared on the screen as "Sunonjo."

  Smith blinked his tired gray eyes.

  "Sunonjo?" he muttered, tapping a hotkey. In response, a window text opened up in the center of the screen.

  "Sunonjo: no exact match."

  Knowing that reporters were notorious for factual and spelling errors, Smith tried several variations, including "Sinanjo" and "Sunanju," but each time no match appeared.

  Giving up, Smith deactivated the encyclopedia program and turned his attention to the main text.

  It was a brief news item datelined Yuma, Arizona. Smith read it carefully.

  Arizona Virus (AP)

  A new form of hantavirus may mean the end to an obscure group of Indians who have survived in the southwest corner of Arizona for centuries. The Sunonjo tribe have dwelt peacefully in the Sonoran Desert, coexisting with Navajo, Hopi and white man alike. Tribal legends say they have never known war. Now a virulent new hantavirus has emerged, which has begun to lay waste to the peace-loving tribe.

  Smith laid his blinking amber cursor against the word hantavirus.

  Instantly a window opened up.

  Hantavirus: A genus of airborne viruses, believed to originate in rodent droppings. First recognized during the Korean War, and named for the Hantaan River, where it was encountered by US. Army doctors. Symptoms include coughing and chills, which rapidly progress to a pneumonialike filling of the lungs, and coma. Death often comes within forty hours, if untreated.

  "Odd," said Smith.

  He finished reading the news extract, found it unimportant except for the coincidence of the name Sunonjo and moved on.

  An hour or so later, eyes fatiguing, Smith logged off the net, frowning.

  It had been an frivolous expenditure of time, he decided.

  Somewhere the truth of Remo Williams's ancestry lurked unsuspected. But wherever it was, it was not to be found on the net. Of that Dr. Harold W. Smith was absolutely positive.

  WHEN REMO WOKE up, his limbs were stiff.

  The polar bear atop him had grown cold and seemed to have picked up an extra ton of dead weight.

  Remo crawled out and got to work immediately.

  He started at the neck, where the warm white fur lay smooth and flat against the bear's skin, and dug his cold-stiffened blue fingers deep into the thick skin.

  With one fingernail that was always kept clipped an eighth-inch longer than the others, Remo began scoring the blubbery skin. His nails-like those of all Sinanju Masters-had achieved a combination of strength and sharpness that ordinary people who abused their bodies by consuming beef fat and dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, could never imagine. Many years of prescribed diet and exercise had given Remo's fingernails the cutting power of a straight razor.

  Still, even a straight razor had its limitations. As he felt the body heat being sucked out of his lean body by the relentlessly contractive Arctic cold, Remo kept at it until the skin at the back of the polar bear's neck parted like a ghastly pink grin, exposing meat and vertebrae.

  Then, selecting a spot over the spine, he climbed atop the behemoth and, working on his knees, began ripping the life-preserving pelt back to the tail. The exuding polar-bear warmth kept his muscles from going too stiff.

  When he was done, Remo peeled both sides down to the ice and tried to figure a way to roll the skeletal mass of exposed raw meat and bones off its skin. His muscles felt like iron lumps.

  The cold continued to suck energy and warmth from his body at a ferocious rate. An internal awareness of his body's state told Remo he was low on calories and to try to move the monster would leave him weak and exhausted on the remorseless ice with a life expectancy of maybe twenty minutes.

  So Remo crawled into the body, squeezing between the thick, yellowish fat and the raw meat and ribs, knowing that the blubber would insulate him from the cold.

  To conserve energy, he went back to sleep. This time he did not dream.

&n
bsp; Chapter 10

  The captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Margaret Trudeau was skeptical to say the least.

  But he saw that the ancient Asian was frantic. It could not be acting. His state was agitated in the extreme.

  As the cutter cut through the Arctic sea, the old man paced the afterdeck frantically while searchlights blazed across the cold, unforgiving waters of Cumberland Sound.

  It was broad daylight now, but there was a chance the searchlights would be seen by the person they were searching for and he would find a way to signal them.

  "Would you mind explaining it all one more time?" Captain Service asked.

  "Yes, I would mind," the old man snapped.

  "It would help us find your friend."

  "He is not my friend. He is a fool whom I cannot leave alone for a single moment."

  "You landed in Pangnirtung, a perfectly inhospitable place, where you and your traveling companion rented a vehicle. That much I have clear in my mind. And you went for a ride without benefit of guide or map. Why?"

  "Remo is very impetuous."

  "No. No. What were you doing in this region? What was your purpose?"

  "Vacation."

  "You and he were vacationing above the Arctic Circle?"

  "It is sununer, is it not?"

  "Yes. But it hardly constitutes the summer of the lower latitudes."

  The old man flapped his scarlet sleeves like a flustered bird trying to take off. "We were driving and ran out of fuel. I went in search of a gas station and when I came back, the vehicle was gone and so was Remo." "Your friend sent you across pack ice for gas?"

  "I know it is idiotic. But I could not trust him not to become lost."

  "I understand you parked at the edge of the sea. A very dangerous place."

  "How was I to know the idiot would park upon a shelf of ice that would fall into the sea?"

  "Actually it didn't fall. It simply broke off and drifted away. It happens all the time during these summer months."

  The old Asian made a snappish gesture with one flapping sleeve. "With Remo and the vehicle upon it. No doubt he was asleep and entirely oblivious to all!"

  "Please calm down. He could not have drifted very far in so short a time. I am confident we will find him."

  "In this merciless cold? It will sap him of all vitality-"

  Captain Service said nothing to that. There was no gainsaying it. If the foolish American who had parked at the edge of Cumberland Sound only to drift off on an ice pack was not soon found, he would certainly perish by the time he reached Davis Strait.

  "We will find him," Service promised.

  But as he returned to the bridge, he saw by his watch that the chances had become very slim indeed. This cold tended to suck the life from a man like some ferocious, icy Dracula.

  LITTLE MORE THAN an hour later the first mate called out. "Captain, I spy something unusual."

  Captain Service went directly to the bow and raised his binoculars.

  "See that growler, sir? There's a polar bear just starboard of the peak."

  "Skinned," the captain said, nodding. "We might take a look."

  Captain Service barked out orders, and the cutter changed course. Soon, under the prod of its churning screws, it warped alongside the looming iceberg and was made fast.

  First off the cutter-before anyone could stop him-was the frail old Asian named Chiun. Bounding across the pack ice, he suddenly didn't look very frail at all. The crew was hard put to keep up with him, in fact.

  His squeakily plaintive voice echoed off the blue berg. "Remo! Remo, are you here?"

  The dead and rent polar bear quivered in answer. And a bluish face popped out from behind a flap of blood-spotted bear hide.

  "Chiun!" a voice croaked.

  "Look what you have put me through!"

  The blue American's face became angry. "Me put you through? You're the one who marooned me on a freaking ice pack!"

  The old Asian shrieked in reply, "Do not dare blame your miserable failures upon me! After all I have done for you!"

  "I was asleep in the back seat one moment, and the next I'm playing Nanook of the North. With no sign of you anywhere."

  "Was it my idea to come to this awful place of ice and bitter cold?"

  "Yes!"

  "Liar."

  Captain Service and a complement of men trudged up as the argument grew shrill.

  "Hah!" cried Chiun, pointing angrily toward the Canadians. "Tell your false tale of woe to these brave sailors who have risked all to succor you."

  "It was his idea," Remo said, pointing back to Chiun. "He thinks this is the moon."

  "You flipped the fickle coin that brought us here," Chiun countered.

  "You flipped a coin?" Captain Service said, dumbfounded.

  "Yeah," said the blue-faced Remo. "It was either here or Africa."

  "Why would anyone go to Africa on vacation?" asked Captain Service in a stumped voice.

  "Search me," said Remo, crawling out and letting his body shiver.

  "Why are you shivering?" Chiun demanded.

  "Because I'm freezing, damn it!"

  "Bring an oilskin for this man," Service ordered. Chiun narrowed his eyes to thin slits. "Do not bother. Let him wear the pelt of his handiwork."

  "I'm cold, not desperate. I'll take the oilskin."

  To the astonishment of all, the tiny Asian stepped up to the dead polar bear and, with quick swipes of his long fingernails, stripped the dead brute of a section of pristine hide.

  Remo pulled this over his shoulders. "Man, I thought I'd never live through the night."

  Chiun looked around unhappily. "Where is the vehicle? I do not see it."

  "Thanks for your consideration," Remo said bitterly, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. "But that moronic polar bear pushed it into the water."

  "Then you must pay for it."

  "There is also a fine for killing this bear without a proper license," said Captain Service. "I assume you do not possess the proper license?"

  "License, my ass!" Remo exploded. "That bear jumped me! It was self-defense."

  "He is quite the complainer for one who has been rescued," Captain Service remarked to Chiun.

  Chiun rolled his eyes. "His carping has been incessant during all the years I have known the wretch. And he is forever falling into ridiculous predicaments such as this."

  "He does appear to be the hard-luck sort," the captain agreed.

  "Can we just be on our way?" Remo grumbled. "I feel like an idiot standing here in a polar-bear skin."

  "Embrace the feeling," Chiun squeaked.

  WHEN THEY PULLED into port, Remo said, "We're blowing this Popsicle stand, and I don't want to hear different."

  "After you have paid the lawful fine," reminded Captain Service.

  Wearily Remo handed over his gold card.

  "As well as all expenses incurred during your rescue," Captain Service added.

  "Don't you rescue people as part of your duties?" Remo asked.

  "We rescue Canadians as part of our duties. Americans have to pay."

  "Don't you people have universal health coverage up here?"

  "We do. But what does that have to do with your situation?"

  Remo pointed an accusing finger at the Master of Sinanju. "Because after twenty years of associating with this old reprobate, I have to be out of my mind to keep following him wherever he goes. Therefore, I plead insanity."

  "Insanity is a plea normally made in a court of law."

  Remo offered his wrists for cuffing. "Haul me before a magistrate, and I'll so plead."

  "Sorry," said the captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter as he ran a credit check on Remo.

  "I can hardly wait to get home," Remo told Chiun pointedly.

  "You can hardly stand," countered Chiun.

  "And you are not going home."

  "Where am I going then?"

  "Africa."

  "I am not going to Africa."

  "Or
we can put off Africa and its soothing heat and go directly to Hesperia."

  "Where's Hesperia?"

  "Where we are going if we do not go to Africa."

  "On second thought," said Remo, "how bad can Africa be?"

  THE STEWARDESSES on the Air Ghana flight wanted to know if inasmuch as they were flying into war-torn Stomique, Remo wouldn't like to have sex one last time. "I don't intend to die in Africa," Remo told them.

  "Once you are dead, it will be too late to change your mind," a second stewardess smilingly argued.

  "I am not changing my mind," Remo assured her. "Are we not the most beautiful black women you have seen?" asked a third in a pouty voice.

  Remo conceded the point. They were as elegantly slim as high-fashion models.

  "And are we not alone in this great big aircraft, just you and the four of us, and is it not a flight of seven boring hours?"

  "You're forgetting my chaperon," said Remo, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to the Master of Sinanju, seated six rows back over the starboard wing.

  "If he is your chaperon, why do you not sit together?"

  "We're having a tiff."

  "You should not be angry with him. He looks very sweet."

  "He tried to feed me to the polar bears a while back. Before that, he almost got me drowned. And I had to move the Sphinx all by myself."

  "Then you should not care that your cruel chaperon disapproves your sleeping with four beautiful flight attendants."

  "Did you know we were all Miss Ghana?" another stewardess wondered.

  "I only sleep with Miss Universes, and even then only one per year."

  The four ex-Miss Ghanas looked perplexed. They repaired to the galley, huddled briefly and when they came out again they wore fierce expressions.

  "We have discussed this," one announced sternly, "and have concluded that you are a vicious racist for not sleeping with us."

  "Yes. An obvious vicious racist."

  "I am not a racist," Remo said wearily.

  "A definite racist. One who refuses to sit with his yellow chaperon or sleep with gorgeous, willing and eager black women."

  Remo got up. "All right, all right," he said.

  The stewardesses brightened. "You are weakening?"

  "No. I surrender absolutely."