Unnatural Selection td-131

by Warren Murphy

  Judith had been shocked by their appearance, but quickly brought herself under control. "Sorry, no can do, Gramps," she said. "I've still got a lot of work ahead of me." With a malevolent grin, she waggled the specimen container.

  "How did you two get here?" Mark demanded. "I didn't hear you drive up."

  "We've been here right along," Remo said. "We've just been waiting for you to finally show up, junior."

  "That's impossible," Mark insisted. "I couldn't hear you or smell you anywhere."

  "How like all the lesser beasts," the Master of Sinanju said, his head shaking with pity. "You smell for the scent of man on the footpath to tell whether or not you should fear, yet you do not sense the arrow that from a distance takes your life. We," he said, nodding to himself and Remo, "are the arrow."

  Judith nodded, impressed. Clearly she hadn't sensed them either. "What can I say. That's exactly why I wanted your input, brown eyes."

  Despite her seeming calm, she was being cautious. With small sidesteps she was circling back.

  Remo expected her to dart for the woods, but instead she inched closer to the building. The broken picture window was above her shoulder.

  "Sorry to disappoint you, Mittens, but that stuff you're holding isn't exactly the freshest fish in the tank."

  Judith's face clouded.

  "How new is this?" she hissed to Howard.

  "I'm not sure the exact date," Mark replied. "But it was taken some time in late 1971."

  "This is more than thirty years old?" she demanded, a hint of worry melting the certainty in her voice.

  "I feel your pain," Remo said. "I'm good, but even I'm not that good."

  He and the Master of Sinanju continued to advance. They came slowly, as if trying not to spook an animal. Judith White seemed to be doing rapid calculations in her head. Mark Howard stepped in front of her.

  "There's no reason this new species and the human race can't live on the same planet peacefully," he said to Remo and Chiun.

  "No deal, kid," Remo replied. "The human race wasn't born yesterday, you know. Mankind turns its back for two seconds and it'd wind up on a platter with an apple in its mouth."

  "Be reasonable," Mark warned.

  "Reason is for man, not beasts," Chiun said. Remo was surprised Judith White hadn't fled by this point. Her behavior seemed to go against every animal instinct for self-preservation. He could sense her growing fear, as well as see her struggle to overcome it.

  He and the Master of Sinanju were nearly upon her when they suddenly sensed another presence nearby. The third heartbeat had just registered to their ears when a new figure sprang into view in the open window.

  The tan face relaxed the instant it spied the two Masters of Sinanju.

  "Hell and damnation, fellas, am I glad to see you," Bobby Bugget said, breathing relief. "I got scarder 'n all hell the way you left me last night. I been hiding out all day in the-" His face dropped when he saw Judith White. "Uh-oh."

  "Get out of here, Bugger," Remo warned.

  But even as he spoke the words, he knew something wasn't right. The singer's heart rate was off. They hadn't detected him as they approached. An average human had no such ability to hide his life signs.

  Bugget had been alone in the warehouse. Bugget had disappeared along with Judith White's case of genetic material. Most important, unlike the first time he'd been dosed with the formula, this time Bugget had been sober.

  Chiun had realized it, too.

  "My songsmith!" the Master of Sinanju cried as Bobby Bugget hopped up onto the windowsill. With a growl, the singer launched himself at Remo. Bugget alone wouldn't have been too much to worry about. Remo had dealt with these creatures before. But simultaneous with Bugget's attack, Mark Howard lashed out.

  He couldn't kill Howard. Not when there was a chance of bringing him home alive. And thanks to Bobby Bugget's fat songwriting yap, he couldn't kill the singer, either. Not without cheesing off the Master of Sinanju.

  It was only an instant. A split second of thought, a mere fraction of equivocation.

  But that minuscule moment of hesitation was enough.

  And in that tiny moment of fractured time, Judith White's darting hand flew forward.

  It wasn't intended as a killing blow. Had that been the case-Howard and Bugget be damned-Remo's system would have gone on automatic, dismissing the conflict of mind, killing her instantly. It was a tiny nick. Just on the forearm.

  Flecks of glistening red speckled the clapboards of the Lubec Springs office wing.

  Blood. Remo's blood.

  And then she was gone. With a single leap she was up to the low roof of the one story building. A hand caught the rain gutter and she was swinging up and over.

  Bugget was still in the air, flying for Remo. A howl of triumph rose from deep in his throat.

  It was a triumph short-lived.

  He had scarcely come within two feet of Remo when a flattened palm caught him dead center in the forehead.

  It was as if Bugget had been hit by a bus. Bones shattered back into his brain. Eyes widened with the shock of death and the singer belly flopped to the ground.

  Remo dropped his hand, whirling for Howard. But the Master of Sinanju had already swept between them. The assistant CURE director didn't see the fluttering hand that darted forward, nor feel the slender fingers that pressed against his bruised temple.

  Mark Howard's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed into the arms of the Master of Sinanju. "Chiun?" Remo pressed urgently.

  "I will see to the Prince," Chiun hissed, nodding sharply. "Go. "

  Remo didn't need to be told a second time. Flexing calf muscles, he launched himself to the roof in a single bound.

  Judith White was gone. "Not this time, sweetheart."

  She wouldn't have gone to the road. Wouldn't risk being seen. The forest meant safety. That eliminated south and west. Picking east, Remo flew to that edge of the roof. He spied a set of fresh imprints in the grass below.

  There were no others running through the woods this day to confuse her tracks. These marks had been made by White.

  In a blur, Remo was back down off the roof and racing full out for the forest. Broken twigs marked the route she had taken. Remo dove in after her.

  Fear had made Judith White clumsy.

  As he raced through the woods, Remo easily spotted the deep heel print that marked the spot where she had changed direction.

  He tore off the same way.

  Two miles into the woods, Remo began to smell the closeness of the Atlantic Ocean. The underbrush grew thicker, and the ocean sounds louder as he drew to the edge of the forest. When he broke through a patch of wind-whipped brush a mile later, he found himself standing at the edge of the world.

  He was on a bluff high above the Atlantic. A blanket of drab clouds pressed down to the whitecapped waves.

  Craggy black rock stabbed off in either direction along the rough shore. Perched at the farthermost point of the jagged finger of rock stood a lone figure.

  Judith White's face registered no surprise when Remo emerged from the woods. Brown eyes trailed him as he stepped across the thin strip of tousled-hair grass that separated forest from rock.

  "We've got to stop meeting like this," she called over the roar of the ocean.

  Despite her seeming calm, he could hear the nervous thump-thump-thump of her beating heart. "That's about to be arranged."

  Remo was at the base of the outcropping. Although he was still far below her on the angled basalt, Judith took a cautious half step back.

  A hundred feet below, the crashing waves of the Atlantic attacked the shore.

  "It's kind of fitting that it would end this way," she called down. "For your species, I mean. Did you know that life here on Earth began in the sea? A couple of spontaneous aggregations of dissolved organic molecules that were born from inorganic chemical reactions. Three and a half billion years later, here we both are."

  "Not for much longer," Remo commented, eyes d
ead. "I like the new arm, by the way." He noted the plastic container clutched in her regrown arm. As if protecting something even more valuable, her other hand was clenched tight, fingernails biting deep into the palm.

  "Starfish DNA," she explained. "I'm from a species that likes to plan ahead. I just wanted to thank you for your contribution, Poppa. None of the other men I've ever met were worthy to become father of the new Earth. But between your genes and mine, look out, world."

  Remo's voice was cold. "Not gonna happen," he vowed.

  There was a faint smile at the corners of Judith White's perfect red lips as she held up the specimen container.

  "Aw, darlin"' she purred. "Thanks to your buddy back there, it's already a done deal. Your boys and I will see you in a few years. Until then, I wouldn't get too comfortable around this planet. Toodles, brown eyes."

  With that, she turned and jumped. The air swallowed her whole.

  "Dammit," Remo snapped. He bounded to the edge of the cliff.

  Judith White had already slipped beneath the black waves that pounded in between the craggy rock. Though he strained to see a body, she didn't resurface.

  It was too great a drop. She shouldn't have survived. But he remembered all too well her spectacular fall from a burning building last time they had met.

  One arm missing, bleeding from the shoulder, building collapsing.

  She had survived that time. Not again.

  Remo kicked off his loafers. Bare toes curled around the edge of the rock promontory. Without a thought of the dizzying height, Remo launched himself out into open air.

  In Sinanju it was called the Flying Wall. His forward momentum carried him out over the churning ocean. He soared parallel to the water's surface for fifty feet before allowing gravity to take hold. He descended in a broad arc, his body capturing rogue air pockets to lighten his landing. When he finally brushed the choppy waves, he was facing back toward shore.

  His body skimmed the surface for about twenty feet before he allowed the sea to wash in over him. He disappeared near the spot where Judith White had vanished, not a single foamy bubble in his wake.

  Below the ocean surface, the cold water of late spring clenched Remo's body like a fist of ice. He willed heat to his extremities as he knifed through the murky waves.

  Eyes oblivious to the sting of salt and cold, he scanned the area near the shore. Judith White's body wasn't visible amid the slimy slabs of underwater rock.

  The surging sea should have thrown her back to shore, crushing her against stone. It would have done so to Remo, but his arms and legs mimicked the waving skirt of a jellyfish, holding him in place. As his limbs danced in deceptively gentle movements, impossible for even the ocean to overcome, Remo willed the very core of his body still.

  He stretched out his senses. The churning water around him became a conductor, carrying sounds and sensations of movement to his finely tuned body.

  Even though summer had not yet warmed the waves, the dark world in which he was an alien visitor teemed with life. He felt many living organisms in the sea around him. All were small.

  Except one.

  About one hundred yards out, the creature that was big enough to be Judith White swam away from shore.

  Remo's gentle resistance to the water ceased. He knifed back into the waves, pulling himself away from shore with sharp, powerful strokes.

  The cold grew worse the farther he went from land. The creature he was following was leading him deeper and deeper out to sea.

  He couldn't allow her to escape. Not this time. Powerful kicks propelled him farther on. He shot through the water like a fired torpedo.

  One hundred and fifty yards out, Remo got his first cloudy glimpse of her. She was knifing through the water, faster than humanly possible.

  A few sharp kicks and he was on her.

  There was no fighting, no finesse. A crushing blow collapsed the back of her skull.

  The plastic container wasn't in her hand. She had to have dropped it when she jumped from the cliff. Her fingers were open. Remo noted that they seemed a bit too long. More genetic tampering, no doubt. Although the skin didn't look quite right. This arm was younger than the rest of the body. He had noticed back on the bluff that the skin texture didn't quite match up with the other arm. But here, underwater, both arms seemed to match perfectly.

  He felt a sudden sinking in his stomach.

  Kicking in the waves, he flipped the body over. Long hair flowed in front of the face. When he pulled it back he found that he was staring into the dead eyes of Elizabeth Tiflis.

  He released the body as if it were electrically charged. The current dragged it slowly away.

  Remo stopped dead. This time when he extended his senses, he felt nothing except schools of small fish. Judith White was gone.

  A single bubble of frustration escaped his thin lips into the cold gray ocean.

  Turning his back on the empty sea, Remo began the long swim back to shore.

  Chapter 36

  When Remo emerged from the woods beside the Lubec Springs bottling plant, the Master of Sinanju was waiting in the front seat of Mark Howard's stolen car. The assistant CURE director lay unconscious on the back seat.

  On his way back through the forest from the ocean, Remo had raised his body temperature to dry his clothes. The last of the steam was whirling wisps as he slid in beside Chiun.

  The old Korean had salvaged Smith's automatic from the Lubec Springs offices. The gun was on the floor at his sandaled feet. Remo glanced at the weapon as he slammed the car door shut. He said not a word.

  Seeing the hard cast of his pupil's face, the Master of Sinanju's own expression darkened.

  "The beast has escaped," he said.

  "Nine lives," Remo said tightly. "You said it yourself. By my calculations she's got seven more left. Smith better have good news on that batch of stuff he's testing."

  He started the car.

  As they pulled away from the building, Remo glanced back to the building that housed the offices. He thought of the tiny flecks on the clapboard walls around the back.

  Chiun saw his pupil glance down at the wound on his forearm. He noted the look of understanding that seemed to settle on Remo's face as they drove across the parking lot and out onto the wooded road.

  Remo sensed his teacher watching him.

  "I get it, Little Father," he said without turning. And it was clear by the cast of his face that this time he truly understood. The old man's lips thinned in quiet relief.

  "Be grateful it is only a scratch," the Master of Sinanju said simply, returning his gaze to the road. "Some lessons come at a much higher cost."

  Remo nodded. "I guess becoming Reigning Master does give you a bit of a swelled head."

  "Perish the thought," Chiun said, aghast. "Your features are already swollen to comedic proportions as it is. With that nose and those ears if your head got any bigger you would have to push it around in a wagon."

  In the back seat, Mark Howard purred. Remo shot the assistant CURE director a glance in the rearview mirror.

  Although sound asleep, there was a curl of a smile on Howard's lips. As if he were dreaming of happier days.

  It was the last peaceful moment Howard was likely to have for some time. The days to come as his own genetic code reemerged would be a nightmare.

  A further gift from Judith White.

  "You think the kid will pull through?" Remo asked.

  Chiun nodded. "In that, as well, Howard is like Smith. Both are stubborn."

  Remo thought of Mark Howard and Harold Smith. He had never been a big fan of either, but at the moment the younger man was winning Remo's personal popularity contest.

  "Good," he muttered.

  Grip tight on the steering wheel, he steered a steady path through the deep forest. Back toward civilization.

  Chapter 37

  The San Diego Police Department captain was grateful when the FBI showed up unexpectedly at Genetic Futures, Inc. After all, he hadn't a c
lue how to handle this bizarre case.

  "Employees found the place a shambles when they came in this morning," the detective explained to the two FBI men as they walked along the hall. There were police everywhere. "A lot of equipment's been stolen. They'll be inventorying later. But that's the least of the problems."

  The window beside them looked out over an enclosed courtyard. On the well-tended grounds, men and women jumped and cavorted happily. Two bounced up and down on an overturned bench. Some screeched angrily at others, baring gums and pounding their chests. A few swung from trees.

  One woman had defecated in her hand. Standing under a tree, she cupped the waste in one hand while waving a fist at the leaves and shouting "ahn-ahn" over and over.

  "We tried to talk to them when we first got here, but they're way too far gone. They threw sticks and dirt at us. We finally shut off all the doors and sealed them out there. It's like they're not even human anymore."

  The older FBI agent was probably some sort of consultant. He was too old to be an active agent. As they observed the strange behavior of the men and women who had, until the previous day, been the most brilliant minds of Genetic Futures, Inc., the older man offered a troubled nod.

  "Whatever they were working on is lost." The younger one said nothing.

  "According to the rest of the staff, the labs had shifts on around the clock waiting for something," the detective said. "It got delivered the other night, I guess, 'cause that's when they kicked into high gear. But just what, the higher-ups don't know. The records seem to be lost, along with the stolen computers. The geneticist in charge might have been able to tell us, but..."

  The detective led them from the window. They walked a little farther down the hall.

  "Only one body," he said as they walked. "But it's a big mess, so prepare yourselves."

  They came to an open door.

  Inside the small office, one of the scientists had been butchered like a cow. His mauled body lay sprawled across his desk. The silver name tag on his blood-soaked lab coat identified the deceased as Dr. Emil Kowalski. For some reason a bale of fresh-cut hay stood upright in the corner near a file cabinet.

  "So what do you think?" the detective said worriedly. "Maybe we got an epidemic on our hands. You think something dangerous got loose?"