Sole Survivor td-72

by Warren Murphy

  "Gobblelegs, Spinner, Spiderette," Larry read. "These are pretty good names-considering industry standards these days."

  "Thank you. I also took the liberty of modifying some of your designs so that they are more practical."

  "We usually don't worry about that stuff. The animators can't be bothered to keep the characters consistent half the time."

  "Is there anything else?"

  "Can you do the android robot counterparts? I'm having trouble with that part."

  "You are my friend so I will do this for you," said Mr. Gordons, and taking several blank sheets and ten minutes' time, he produced a set of model-sheet androids that exactly matched the Spideroid drawings.

  Larry Lepper was astonished. This Gordons character didn't even refer to the original sheets. Yet his robots were perfect. They looked like they could be built. In the margins Gordons had even worked out weight specifications, gear ratios, and other technical details that would have been absurd if they didn't look so damned plausible.

  "You really are an android," said Larry Lepper wonderingly.

  "If you had known me before today, you would not have doubted me," said Mr. Gordons. "I do not lie."

  "That means you can really turn into other stuff, like the Robokids do. Really?"

  "Really. Would you like me to demonstrate?"

  "No! I mean, yeah. Maybe." Larry Lepper was thinking at a furious pace. This nut or machine or whatever it was seemed to like him.

  "Please make up your mind. I have enemies and now that I understand I cannot rely on the fictitious Commander Robot, I must discover a new form to take so that my enemies will not find me."

  "You can turn into anything?"

  "Yes. I require only appropriate raw materials to assimilate. "

  Larry Lepper looked at Mr. Gordons and his all-purpose drawing hand.

  "I'm your friend, right?"

  "You are my friend, right."

  "And you can turn into anything?"

  "I have already said that."

  "Anything I ask, right?"

  "Yes. "

  "If I asked you to turn into something very, very big, what would you say?"

  "I would say what very, very big thing do you want me to assimilate, friend?"

  "I'll get my car," said Larry Lepper, deciding that here was one robot he could learn to love, "and show you."

  Chapter 17

  At Los Angeles International Airport, the Master of Sinanju rented a car with the privileged air of a diplomat being whisked through customs.

  "I'm driving," Remo insisted, as the counter clerk finished processing Chiun's credit card.

  "No," said the Master of Sinanju firmly. "I am."

  "Little Father, you don't know the roads out here. I do. We'll get there faster if I drive."

  "But you do not know our destination," Chiun said triumphantly. "I do."

  They walked to the lot in silence. Since Chiun had told Remo that he knew where to find Mr. Gordons, he had refused to say any more. He had asked Harold Smith to book a flight for Los Angeles and went off to change his clothes. Remo was surprised when he returned, not in a gaudy American suit, but wearing a brocaded kimono that Remo estimated weighed close to twenty pounds. The Master of Sinanju had explained that the matter between Sinanju and Gordons was a matter of honor and required ceremonial attire, and that he was not renouncing American dress, despite what Remo might think. He had also suggested that Remo dress more appropriately. Remo had changed his socks.

  When they neared the rental car, Remo darted ahead and slipped behind the wheel. He grabbed it in both hands and clung for dear life.

  "You are not driving," said the Master of Sinanjn testily. "I am. I purchased the use of this conveyance with my wondrous card and I insist upon driving."

  "It's a credit card and everyone has one," cried Remo.

  "Not like mine. Mine is gold, and merchants do not burden me with requests for money when I use it."

  Remo, who had tried repeatedly to explain how credit cards really worked, and failed, sighed and said, "I'm driving. Just tell me where I'm going."

  The Master of Sinanju stamped a sandaled foot. "If you do not step out this instant I will have you arrested." He made a show of looking around for a policeman.

  "Tell you what, Little Father," Remo said lightly. "Let me drive down so you get to know the roads and I'll let you drive us back. Fair enough?"

  "I wish to drive both ways," Chiun said stubbornly. "Sometimes the roads are not the same in both directions."

  "Look, if I drive, you can concentrate on navigation. Anna told me you were a wonderful driver, but needed more navigation practice."

  "She said that?" asked Chiun.

  "Absolutely," lied Remo.

  "I take back every bad thing I said about her," said Chiun, stepping around to the passenger side. "Where to?" asked Remo when Chiun settled into the passenger side.

  "I will not tell you. I wish it to be a surprise."

  "Then how am I going to get there?"

  "Give me a map and I will inform you of each step."

  "Oh, for crying out loud," Remo sighed, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a folded road map. "Here."

  The Master of Sinanju delicately unfolded the map and studied it for some moments, tracing several routes with a long-nailed finger. Remo tried to peer over the edge of the map, and Chiun shifted in his seat so that his back was to Remo.

  Remo folded his arms and looked bored. Finally Chiun said, "Leave this parking area."

  Remo sent the car out of the lot and asked, Now what?"

  "Left."

  "This will go a lot smoother if I'm not working from connect-the-dots directions," Remo complained. "Could you possibly see fit to give a town to aim for? Please."

  "Very well," said Chiun petulantly. "We are going first to Inglewood."

  Remo fought the traffic along Manchester Boulevard until they hit Inglewood, and asked, "Now?"

  "Follow this same road south."

  Remo drove until the road took him to Firestone Boulevard and finally linked up with the Santa Ana Freeway. It was only ten in the morning and traffic was just a step away from being gridlocked.

  "I do not know why you did not wish me to drive," said Chiun, his eyes peeled for cars decorated with fuzzy dice. "We are spending most of our time standing still."

  Because he was in no mood for an argument, Remo asked about something that had been bothering him. "When Smith gave that credit card to you, what exactly did he say?"

  "He said I was responsible for it."

  "Responsible. That was the word he used?"

  "Exactly. Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, nothing," said Remo. "By the way, have you been getting a lot of strange mail lately?"

  "Some. All junk. I throw it out unread."

  "I see," said Remo.

  "Why did you ask that question?" Chiun wanted to know.

  "Oh, no reason. Just to kill time."

  The traffic got worse the further south they traveled. When they entered the town limits of Anaheim, it was almost at a standstill.

  "This next exit," said Chiun at the last possible minute. Remo sent the car sliding off the ramp with a screech of tires.

  "A little more warning next time, huh?" he said.

  "We are almost there."

  "Where?" But Remo knew where almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He braked the car. "Oh, no," he said, looking at the huge sign gracing the entrance to a sprawling parking area: DISNEYLAND.

  "Oh, yes," said the Master of Sinanju proudly. Grimly Remo drove into the lot and parked the car. With Chiun trailing behind him, he strode to the row of ticket booths. A digital sign for keeping track of admissions stood off to one side. The current number was 257,998,677.

  Remo groaned.

  "Do you not agree with me that this is where Gordons has come?" Chiun said.

  "Yeah, Little Father, I do," Remo said hoarsely. He was thinking of the numbers of people who pa
ssed through the gates of Disneyland every day. He could remember reading that more than three million people had visited Disneyland since opening day. That meant thousands each year. And every one of them potential victims of Mr. Gordons' microwave sterilization plan.

  Remo walked up to one of the booths. The ticket girl practically hugged him.

  "Oh goody, a customer!" she squealed delightedly.

  "Why the surprise?" asked Remo. "Don't you get hundreds of people here every day?"

  "Look around. Do you see any hundreds of people?" Remo looked around. There were only the other ticket takers, looking at Remo with longing expressions. He looked back at the parking area. Except for Remo's car, it, too, was empty. In the background the famous Disneyland monorail scooted along its raised track, every car vacant.

  "Where are all the people?" Remo asked.

  "We haven't had any ever since that other place opened up," the ticket girl confided.

  "What other place?" asked Remo.

  "Don't tell him," the other ticket takers hissed.

  "Too late," said Remo. "Tell me."

  "Larryland. It's down in Santa Ana. It sprang up practically overnight, and ever since it did, people have been going there instead of here."

  "So what? They'll come back when the novelty wears off. "

  "Not this novelty. Larryland gives free admission."

  "Did you say free?" asked Chiun, who had been looking in vain for Mickey Mouse.

  "Yeah. And it's twice the size of this place. That will be thirteen dollars for two adult admissions, please," she added.

  Remo ignored her and turned to Chiun. "Little Father, I think you were wrong."

  "But not far wrong," Chiun insisted. "I think we should venture to this upstart Larryland. After we have visited Frontierland, that is. I have always wanted to see Frontierland."

  "Frontierland was dismantled years ago, Little Father," Remo said gently.

  Chiun sucked in his cheeks with disappointment. "No!" he gasped.

  "I'm afraid so."

  Chiun brushed past Remo and accosted the ticket girl.

  "Frontierland. It is no more?"

  "Long gone," said the girl.

  "Do you have any more of the fur caps with the long tails?"

  "Davy Crockett hats are collector's items now. You can't get them anymore."

  Chiun turned on Remo. "You should have brought me here sooner," he said, and stormed off to the car.

  "This was your idea, remember?" Remo shouted. Then he ran after the Master of Sinanju in case Chiun decided that his only solace after this grievous disappointment would be to get behind the wheel of an automobile.

  "Does this mean you're not coming in after all?" the ticket girl called after them.

  Colonel Rshat Kirlov had always dreamed of one day visiting the United States of America. He never imagined he would cross the border walking on his hands and knees, leading soldiers who crawled like dogs.

  At thirty-seven years of age, Colonel Kirlov was a squat bull of a man whose swarthy skin betrayed a hint of Tatar blood. His black hair was as coarse as horsehair. He would never pass for an American, but he could pass for a Mexican peasant, which was why he had been selected for this mission.

  Mexicans would not mistake him for one of their own, however. That was why Colonel Rshat Kirlov kept his distance from the occasional real migrant worker as he led ten handpicked soldiers, mostly enlistees from the Asiatic republics of Uzbekistan and Tashkent, across the desert on their hands and knees. They were dressed in the Mexican peasant clothes which had been provided to them at the embassy in Mexico City, where they had been flown directly from Moscow. They had donned the garments when they got to the dusty border town of Sonoita, to which they had been driven in a rickety bus.

  There they had set out on foot for the Arizona border. The embassy had briefed him that the border was not heavily patrolled. Although the American government frowned upon the migrant workers who stole up from Mexico, they also needed them to harvest their fruit crops. Crossing would be comparatively easy, he was assured.

  Colonel Kirlov was not a man to take chances. So he had his men drop to their knees and, leading the way, he showed them how to walk on their knees and just the tips of their fingers. The tracks they left would look uncannily like those of a hopping jackrabbit. That was to fool the American border police.

  They traveled for three miles in this fashion, with hot desert sand burning their fingertips and windblown sand abrading their faces. Colonel Rshat Kirlov worried that their fingers would be too raw to pull gun triggers when the time came, but inasmuch as he had been forbidden to carry weapons into the United States, it did not seem especially important just then.

  When Colonel Kirlov finally gave the order to stand, they were on American soil.

  They ambushed a camper van on a lonely road. Kirlov waved his cotton shirt in the face of the oncoming vehicle, and when it slowed, his men leapt from out of the rocks. That they were unarmed made no difference. There was only a middle-aged man and his wife and their dog. They killed all three with bare hands, burying all but the dog by the side of the road. They buried the dog too, but only after they had eaten the meat.

  Colonel Kirlov's orders were to reach the town of Vaya Chin, near the Papago Indian Reservation, and wait.

  When Anna Chutesov showed up two days later, she took one look at the hijacked camper and said, "Good. You are not as big a fool as I would have expected. We will need this."

  Colonel Rshat Kirlov was not used to having a woman talk to him like that. Especially one who was not a KGB officer. He started to raise his voice in protest.

  Anna Chutesov slapped him in the face. It was the shock more than the pain that stilled his tongue. Disdainfully the blond woman turned her back on him and addressed his men, who were lined up at attention. "I have brought you all American tourist clothes," she said, tossing bundled packages at their feet. "Go behind those rocks and change while I load your equipment on the vehicle."

  When Colonel Kirlov opened his package, he discovered a gaudy Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. Changing clothes in silence, he felt like a fool. Looking at his men climbing into their new clothes, he knew he looked like one too.

  Kirlov sat in the back of the camper during the drive across the desert to the place that Anna Chutesov, breaking a long smoldering silence, told them was California. She kept adjusting a beeping device that sat in her lap. Often she raised it, turning a loop antenna this way or that, and sending the camper in confused circles. Kirlov knew she was homing in on some radio signal. But that was all he knew.

  Finally, after many long hours in which the driven blond woman had refused to give any of them a turn at the wheel, they stopped on a great black highway where the traffic was backed up until they could drive no further.

  Anna Chutesov stood up.

  "We can go no further. The rest of the way we will travel on foot. In twos. You will find your weapons in the overhead compartments."

  The men fell on the compartments like thirsty dogs. They had been alone in an enemy land too long without weapons. Weapons would make them feel like men again.

  Colonel Kirlov pulled out a stubby Uzi with a folding stock and looked at his men. They, too, had brought forth identical weapons.

  "No Kalashnikov rifles?" Kirlov said to no one in particular.

  "The Uzi is an excellent field weapon and easily concealed," said Anna Chutesov. "Gather up extra ammunition clips and form your men into pairs. I will direct them on when to exit."

  "Where are we going?"

  Anna Chutesov pointed out of the windshield, beyond the lines of honking, smoking cars.

  Colonel Rshat Kirlov squinted. Not many hundreds of yards away was a great encampment. Towers climbed to the sky. A peculiar wheel turned against the sun, like a cog in a great machine. Flying machines darted like dragonflies.

  Colonel Rshat Kirlov nodded. Obviously the place was an important American installation. Probably a space complex, for Kirlo
v knew of the recent loss of the Yuri Gagarin.

  He tried to read the enormous sign over the entrance, but he could translate only the last part of the complex's official title.

  He turned to one of his men, whose English was better than his own.

  "What means 'Larry'?" he asked. "I do not know the word."

  "We are obviously going to that secret American space complex ahead," he whispered to the others. "Do any of you know what that word on the great sign means?"

  The men took turns squinting at the large sign.

  But none of them could translate the peculiar name Larryland into proper Russian. And the cold Anna Chutesov refused to enlighten them.

  Chapter 18

  Larry Lepper was lord and master of all he surveyed. Standing on the top of a fairyland minaret, he enjoyed the spectacular panorama that was Larryland. From the main gate, where the crowds streamed in through the opening in the shape of Buster Bear's smiling mouth, to the hundred-foot statues of Squirrel Girl, Magic Mouse, and other Larry Lepper creations, he owned it all. Children played in the plastic-cobbled streets. Their shrieks of joy radiated from the Room of the Creepers, laughter welled up from the Hologram House, and the smells of popcorn, cotton candy, and fried dough wafted into the dry heat of the southern California afternoon.

  Larry had it all. No more slaving away at a drawing board. Never again would he have to work for the likes of Bill Banana or draw another robot. In fact, producers were banging at the door to option his characters. Larry had always assumed that he would achieve his dream the other way around-get the characters on the air first and hope they led to a theme park. But it had come true the easy way.

  And best of all, it had happened overnight.

  Larry had led the strange Mr. Gordons to the site, a deserted theme park that had gone bankrupt trying to compete with Disneyland.

  "Can you do something with this?" Larry had asked. It was night. Mr. Gordons simply walked through the chain-link fence, cutting a hole large enough to pass through with fingers like wire cutters. He walked over to the deserted Ferris wheel and into the control booth. Not through the door, but literally into the wall. Larry had blinked, and the wall had seemed to absorb Gordons.