Death Check td-2

by Warren Murphy

  "What good is it?" Remo asked.

  "Well, medically, it's very important. We could help save lives of people who are troubled with heart irregularities. Asthmatics could learn to will their way out of serious breathing attacks. Psychosomatic illnesses could virtually be wiped out." He was warming to his subject now.

  As he talked on, Remo thought that Chiun should have been sent here to investigate this place. The aged Korean with his fish-heads and rice and Zen could give all these big brains a run for their money. During those long training sessions, he remembered seeing Chiun slow his heart beat until it was almost imperceptible, his breathing rate until he appeared to be dead. Chiun had told Remo that Chiun's father could stanch the flow of blood by thinking about it. "The mind," he said. "You cannot control the body until you control the mind."

  "Where did you learn to do it?," Ferrante intruded on Remo's thoughts.

  "Do what?"

  "The business with those shits out in the courtyard."

  "Around. Correspondence courses. A one-hour work-out every month whether I want to or not. Helps keep me in trim."

  Ferrante had recovered his poise now. Still wearing the incongruous judo outfit, he was very much the world-renowned scientist.

  He showed Remo the equipment he worked with, and Remo thought that scientific equipment everywhere on every project is probably interchangeable. These fakers probably trade it around among themselves like used books. There was a chair with a hand grip through which a minor electric shock passed into the subject if he failed to respond and another helmet, like Schulter's, through which pleasurable waves passed by induction into the brain.

  Ferrante was offering to test Remo. Well, I owe him one. I'll give him something to chew on. He sat in the chair and his resting pulse rate was sixty-eight. If the rate went up, Ferrante said, he'd get a slight shock through the hand grip. A down rate would bring a pleasure impulse through the helmet he placed over Remo's head.

  Ferrante set a metronome at sixty-five beats per minute. "That's the goal," he told Remo, "but don't be disappointed if you don't make it. Hardly anyone does."

  The metronome was ticking, Ferrante was holding Remo’s wrist in a running check on his pulse, and Remo was remembering the trick Chiun had taught him. Set up your own rhythm, wipe out external impulses, speed up your breathing pattern to match the desired heart rate, and let the hyper-ventilation of the lungs slow the heart by flooding the blood with oxygen.

  "Ready?," Ferrante asked. "I'll call out your heart rate as we go along so you can try to adjust."

  "How bad's the shock?" Remo asked. "I'm afraid of electric chairs."

  "Nothing to worry about," Ferrante said. "More like a buzz than a real shock. Start.... now."

  The metronome was clicking its sixty-five beats per minute and Remo tuned his breathing pattern into it.

  "Sixty-eight," Ferrante called. Remo quietly snorted his breath in and out.

  "Sixty-six."

  Remo closed his eyes to the metronome and blanked the sound of its rhythms out of his mind. He chose a new lower rhythm, and adjusted his breathing to it.

  "Sixty-four." Ferrante was delighted. Remo breathed.

  "Sixty."

  "Fifty-nine."

  Remo decided to call a halt when he had dropped his heart rate down to forty-two. Ferrante didn't know whether to be delighted or upset, or whether he had been cheated.

  "That's incredible," he said. "I never saw anything like that."

  "I told you, I'm afraid of electric chairs. And I've got a low tolerance of pain."

  And then there was Ratchett. Remo never had a chance to figure out what Ratchett did, or how to get to him, because Ratchett refused to open the door to his cottage which, unlike the other top staff, he used only for an office, preferring to live in his eggshell home a few hundred yards away.

  "Go away," he shouted. "I don't like you."

  "I thought you wanted to see me," Remo told the closed door.

  "If I never see you, it will be too soon. Go away."

  "Must I assume, Doctor Ratchett, that you don't like me?"

  "You will be well within the limits of possibility, Mister Pelham, if you assume that I loathe you. Now go away before I call a cop. One of your own will know how to deal with you."

  Remo turned and walked away. Ratchett too would be easy if the call came. He did not realize that someone else would issue the call for Ratchett before CURE did.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Later that day, the staff department heads of Brewster Forum had held their regular weekly meeting in Brewster's office. Dr. Deborah Hirshbloom was absent.

  Ferrante was talking about the new director of security. "So basically, he's a coward. Terribly afraid of pain. Just the threat of the electric shock produced an incredible swing in his pulse rate."

  He sat down. Abram Schulter's chuckle broke the silence. "Inadequate data, Professor Ferrante. Incorrect analysis of the inadequate data. Mr. Pelham is fearless. Cold blooded! In brain wave analysis, he had absolutely no reaction to any of the external stimuli. None at all."

  "Probably," Ratchett snarled, "you failed to have the machine plugged in. Did either of you consider that Pelham's intelligence is probably just too low to respond adequately to stimuli which is emotionally charged, but also intellectually powerful?"

  "Is that your feeling?" Boyle asked. "That Pelham is of low intelligence?"

  "Of course," Ratchett said. "Isn't it obvious? And think of his performance out in the courtyard with that awful gang. Is that a sign of intelligence?"

  Boyle smiled. "I might suggest that there is more intelligence involved in chasing them away than there is in calling them here."

  Ratchett flushed. Boyle went on. "I would say Mr. Pelham's intelligence is extremely high. He is also very devious and suspicious. He answers a question with a question. It's a yid trick-excuse me, Abram-but it's also the sign of a man used to intellectual sparing, who always looks for a quid before giving away a quo."

  Nils Brewster listened quietly through all this, sucking on his pipe, his hands resting on his corpulent stomach, his nose encased in more bandage than was really necessary. If Brewster had a secret for his success, it was this: his ability to dominate a group, keep them splintered and leaderless and unable to challenge his authority. He finally spoke.

  "Well," he said, "I suppose that settles it. Our new policeman is either very smart or very stupid. He is either a coward or absolutely fearless." He looked at all of them and sneered. "Another victory for intellectual analysis."

  "This sounds curiously like the argument about whether a shark is brave, because he will attack anything no matter how big, or cowardly, because he prefers to feed off the crippled, the sick and the dying. Or is a lion clever, as he shows himself to be in his stalking of prey, or stupid, as he indicates by his irrational behaviour when caged in a zoo?

  "The fact is, as all of you should know by now, that the shark is neither brave nor cowardly. And the lion is neither clever nor stupid. They exist outside of these concepts. They are instinctual and those words are meaningless when applied to them. Did it ever occur to any of you that perhaps our tests are meaningless for Mr. Pelham, because they are designed for normal human beings? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Mr. Pelham is like an animal, showing behaviour patterns that once we would characterize as intelligent, another time as stupid; one time as brave, another time as cowardly? Did it ever occur to you that Dr. Pelham might be a creature of instinct or a human being programmed to act as a creature of instinct? And that to study him and understand him, we must approach him as we would approach a beast of the field? "Did any of that every occur to any of you geniuses?" He sat back and occupied himself with his pipe and with being Nils Brewster. No one else spoke. He puffed rapidly on his pipe, satisfied that he had again won the day, and then went on:

  "Frankly, I don't know why any of us care about this Remo Pelham. I surely don't. But-just academically of course-I think he is perhaps best me
asured against the standards of instinct. Through his unconscious. It would seem to be the province of Dr. Hirshbloom. I suggest we just forget him, and let him go on doing whatever it is a policeman does around here. Leave him for Dr. Hirshif she's interested.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  But it was obvious that Dr. Hirshbloom did not wish to deal with the American. The new Brewster Forum bobby showered the little Hebrew wench with the typical colonial effusiveness that Americans consider charm, and civility people understand as undue familiarity.

  Geoffrey Hawkins, Brewster Forum sky-diving instructor and former subaltern of Her Majesty's Royal Marines refused to bestow the recognition of a glance upon either his pupil or that incredible American who insisted upon trying to make a date with her.

  Hawkins sat in the Piper Cub, his parachute a cushion behind him and his legs stretched across the width of the small single-engine plane.

  It was his job, a labour for daily purse, to instruct any staff members of the Forum who wished to parachute in the art of parachuting. Fortunately, that incredible motley crew of the gross technological giant that George III had allowed to wend its crude way into independence, dared not suffer Hawkins' explicit and daily disdain.

  Only the Israeli girl, who undoubtedly had to continue her training, participated in the sky diving. Which was rather a bit of all right, since she had the decency not to attempt a conversation with Geoffrey Hawkins. Either she knew her place, understood decorum, or had nothing to say. Which for a Jew was an incredible virtue. Unfortunately so few other people shared her ability to refrain from conversation.

  Like that typically German bore, who pretended to be of another nationality. He had given Hawkins $5,000 to see that Remo Pelham did not land alive. But then he had insisted upon trying to justify it to Hawkins.

  Geoffrey Hawkins needed no justification. One had to live. And anyway, it would not be murder. Murder was when you deprived an Englishman of life. Survival was when you took life from an American. And public health was when one removed Irishmen.

  It was a bit of a shame however that this Pelham was not Australian. Then one would know that one was rea criminal. Or the seed of a criminal, which was the same thing anyway.

  Even in Britain, the gentry had lost sight of what they were. The world had gone mad and Britain had gone mad with it. This pathetic affection and respect for America, a nation which had once had an Irish President. Scots walk around like human beings. Welshmen knighted every day. And all of them calling themselves British. When only Englishmen were English!

  The sun had set on the soul of the British empire.

  "Hey, buddy. How do you fix this thing?"

  It was the American. He was going to jump from 13,000 feet, free fall for one minute, then open his chute and land. He had never been in a parachute before.

  Five thousand dollars for this? Geoffrey Hawkins could earn his money by allowing this colonial bumpkin just to attempt free fall. But that would not be thorough. Thor was cutting the leg straps under the leather joints so that when the chute opened, if it opened, it would rise from the shoulder harness and Remo Pelham would keep going down, out of his chute, to the ground. , "Hey, buddy. How do you get this thing on?"

  Geoffrey Hawkins turned to the financial pages. If one could properly invest one's $5,000, one could transform it into a rather considerable amount.

  "Hey. You with the moustache and the paper. How does this thing buckle?"

  Imperial Chemical Industries was up. Good. If one invested in Imperial Chemical Industries, one could not only help civilized industry but oneself. It was a good investment for oneself.

  Finally, the Jewess helped him. No character, thought Hawkins. She had refused to talk to the American, had turned away from him, had ignored his blandishments and his insipid pleading, but now she turned to help him with the chute. Leg straps, shoulder straps, the rip cord ring, proper harness position.

  When done, she turned away again. "Thirteen thousand feet," she said to Hawkins.

  "Umm," he replied, because as jump instructor, he had to.

  "We're ready," she said. The soon-to-be-dead American sat beside her.

  The Germans had a point. But they were so crude about it. If one were to strip a German to his soul, one would achieve the essence of gauche. Even the way that Hun had slipped the envelope to Geoffrey Hawkins. As if he were reaching surreptitiously into Hawkin's privates.

  "Yessir, this is going to be fun," said the American. His brown eyes were shining. His face was shaved of hair. He would clunk like a pinball machine on the Virginia country. He would tilt in all directions.

  The engines revved, groaning for power, and the light plane shook.

  Her Majesty's forces, according to the Times, were still in Aden by the Persian Gulf. Lucky Aden. But this was America which had so stubbornly insisted upon going it alone and was paying for it daily.

  The Jewess had finally relented. She was explaining something to the American. Hawkins listened from behind the Times.

  "The plane is going to 13,000 feet. It's a one-minute free fall. You pull your cord immediately. Just follow me. I'll make sure your cord is pulled. You're very stupid trying this the first time."

  "Listen, sweetheart, don't worry about me."

  "You are incredibly stupid."

  "This was the only way I could get to talk to you."

  "As I said, you are incredibly stupid."

  The two were yelling now, to overcome the motors.

  "I want to talk to you," the American said.

  "Your leg straps are too loose."

  "When can we get together?"

  "I'm busy this year. Try me next year at the same time."

  Suddenly her voice called out, "Mr. Hawkins! Who gave him this chute?"

  She was doing it again. Talking to Geoffrey Hawkins without being addressed first. He ignored her.

  "Will you put down that paper? You can't let this man jump in this chute."

  Put down the paper? What gall.

  Suddenly the dark columns of small type disappeared. The paper went flying. It had been ripped out of his hands by the American.

  "I beg your pardon," Geoffrey said in his most disdainful manner, calculated to set the American cringing in apologies.

  "Perfectly all right," the American responded. "She's talking to you."

  "I am perfectly capable of discerning such auditory phenomena as women speaking. I do not need your assistance.

  "Then why didn't you answer her?"

  "That is hardly a topic I wish to discuss with you," said Geoffrey Hawkins to the American policeman. "Now read my Times if you would."

  "Who gave him this parachute?," the girl asked. "Did you?"

  "I am not a supply sergeant. I do not dispense parachutes."

  "Well, he can't jump out of the plane in that chute."

  "He certainly can't jump without one," said Hawkins, who thought that incredibly funny, worth repeating to an Englishman.

  "It's no wonder the British army dispensed with your services," the girl said.

  That was enough. Geoffrey would have to thrash her. He gave her the back of his hand across her face. At least, he attempted to. But it seemed as though some fast air current spun his hand harmlessly in the air.

  "Keep your tongue, Jewess," he said, watching his hand flail to the side of the plane.

  "Don't give me that shit, Hawkins. Did you unload the faulty chute on him?"

  "Answer her," said the American.

  The pilot interrupted. "We're approaching target and 13,000 feet," he called out. Good, that would settle everything. To jump from 13,000 feet one had to be in an aircraft that climbed almost straight up, and one jumped at its zenith. It was the only practical way, since if the plane levelled off at 13,000 feet, everyone would need oxygen. This way, the plane was at that altitude so briefly that oxygen was unnecessary.

  "Jump, Dr. Hirshbloom, if you're going to," Hawkins said. The door near his feet opened, and the girl half stood up. As she
struggled over Hawkins' outstretched legs, she said: "Don't let him jump in that chute." She turned to the American: "Don't you jump."

  She thrust a boot out on to the strut, waited a moment, and was gone.

  "Are you jumping, Yank? Or are you going to be typical and wait for a computer to do it for you?"

  "I don't think I'll jump," said the American. The rip-wind from the open door whipped through his brown hair.

  "Well, it's your choice," Hawkins said. "Here, why don't you have a look? You'll know what it's like next time. Or are you afraid to look."

  "I know what the ground looks like, sweetheart," the American said.

  "The Jewess makes an interesting jump," Hawkins said, peering out the door. "She does a very special free fall."

  The American cop shrugged, stepped over Geoffrey's legs, and peered out. Geoffrey Hawkins put his shoulder to the American's back, braced his feet against his seat, and pushed hard, devastatingly hard. And nothing hap

  "You want to jump with me?," said the American, turning.

  Geoffrey Hawkins pushed again and this time he was successful. Too successful. He found his own energy, with an assist from the American, had hurtled him head first toward the wing struts outside, and then he was outside the plane, dropping through the chill cold wind, with the American firmly latched to his throat.

  They accelerated quickly, then hit top speed and they were free falling. The American was smiling and humming Yankee Doodle.

  Geoffrey attempted to kick him away. The $5,000 was as good as his. But the kick went nowhere. As a matter of fact, the right leg went out, and then became numb. The American's hands seemed to float, then dart, then plunge forward and back. And for all Geoffrey Hawkins' effort, he could not unlatch the colonial who just smiled and hummed and moved his hands in those extraordinary ways. Geoffrey attempted to use a karate chop against the bridge of the American's nose.

  But as his hand started to move, it became numb, and then.... Ye gads. The left rider to the chute was slipping off the useless left hand. Then the American worked at the main buckle on the chest strap and it was off, and Geoffrey was suddenly spinning around and facing away from the American. Then the other strap to the right rider was eased off a suddenly numb right arm, and only his legs remained strapped into the unopened chute. And then Geoffrey was spinning again, this time face forward and he felt the chute yank up between his legs and he was diving head first towards the ground, without his parachute or the use of his limbs. He attempted to flip over, but there was just the slightest slap on his back and he remained, going face down, floating down.