Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  "I looked it up in the computer," Barry said. "Actually, I knew that part already. Most scientists know about Morley's disappearance a couple of years ago. But I found out something even more interesting."

  "What's that?"

  "Will you take me with you?" Barry said. He turned tearful eyes toward Smith.

  "No, Barry," Smith said. "I will not."

  "I just wanted to go with you."

  "Quite impossible. Now will you give me that information or not? It will save me a few minutes' work."

  "All right," Barry whined. "I learned about Dr. Morley when I was in school because I studied entomology. Some believed that Morley had made a scientific breakthrough on the pheromones and left because he did not want to share credit with Dr. Ravits. Others thought that he had just had a breakdown and ran away."

  "Well?" Smith said impatiently.

  "Because the name came in in connection with Perriweather, I started to look at banks where Perriweather lives. And there's a Dexter Morley listed at the Beverly First Savings with a bank balance of two hundred and one thousand dollars."

  Smith arched an eyebrow, and pleased by the man's reaction, Barry rushed along with his story.

  "I'm sure it's him. I've cross indexed him a lot."

  "So Morley might have been hired away from Ravits at a big salary increase?" Smith said.

  "I couldn't find anything about an employer, though," Barry said. "All the deposits were made in cash."

  "I presume because the employer didn't want anyone to know about it," Smith said.

  "Morley must have lived with his employer too because there's no listing of him as homeowner, tenant or telephone user within a hundred-mile radius of Beverly."

  "Interesting," Smith said.

  "I could really be helpful," Barry wheedled. His brow creased.

  "I don't know, Barry," Smith said.

  "Just tell me what you need, Harold. I want to earn my way. You'll be glad you took me along. Really you will. I can install the device on your other computers to prevent break-in. I'm better at that than you are. And I can help with this Dexter Morley. I studied entomology for three years."

  "Three years isn't very much study in a field like that, is it?" Smith asked.

  Barry looked hurt. "In three years, I read every major work on the subject written in English. My reading in French and Japanese was extensive too. I had to read German and Chinese in translation."

  "I see," Smith said.

  "They were good translations though," Barry offered. "Give me a chance, Harold."

  Barry rose from the table, biting his lip. The fingers clutching the piece of paper in his hand were white. Barry might be helpful, Smith thought, in translating Dexter Morley's notes, if those were what Remo had. But what would Smith do with him after that? After the project was over and done with, and there was no more use for Barry Schweid, what would Smith do with him? There was an answer in the back of his mind, but he did not want to think about it. Not now.

  "After I'm done, I'll take care of myself," Schweid said.

  "It's only a work project," Smith said.

  "For you, it's only a project."

  Smith sighed. "All right," he said finally. Barry's face broke into a large grin.

  "But I won't be responsible for you before, during or after. Is that clear?"

  "Like crystal," Barry Schweid said adoringly. Smith ground his teeth together in frustration as he closed the attache-case computer. Something told him he had just made a terrible mistake. Barry was too attached to him and now Smith was taking him into a real world, a world where people had the power to kill and were not reluctant to use that power. Would the slings and arrows of ordinary life destroy the fragile young man?

  Smith closed his eyes for a moment to squeeze the thought away. There was nothing he could do about it. After all, he was not Barry Schweid's keeper.

  But then, he thought, who was?

  * * *

  Remo and Chiun were still waiting when Smith arrived at the Perriweather mansion.

  "I trust the police haven't been here yet," Smith said.

  "Nobody alive to call them," Remo said. "Except us, and we don't like the police stomping around. Who's that?" He cocked his head toward the rotund little man who seemed to be trying to hide behind Smith.

  Smith cleared his throat. "Errr, this is my associate, Barry Schweid."

  "And Blankey," Barry said.

  "And Blankey?" Remo said.

  "And Blankey," Barry said, holding up the piece of blue material.

  "Oh," Remo said. "Well, you and Blankey stay right there. We have to talk privately." He grabbed Smith's arm and pulled him to a far corner of the room.

  "I think the time has come for me to talk to you," Remo said.

  "Oh, yes? What about?"

  "About Butterball and Blankey."

  "Why does that bother you?" Smith said.

  "Why does that bother me? All right, I'll tell you why that bothers me. For ten years I have heard nothing from you except secrecy, secrecy, secrecy. I have sent more people than I care to remember into the Great Void because they found out something they shouldn't have about CURE. Remember those? They were all assignments from you."

  "Yes, I remember them. Every one of them," Smith said.

  "So what are we doing here with this cretin?" he said, nodding toward Barry.

  "Barry has been doing some work for me on the CURE computers, to make them tamper-proof. And he understands entomology. I thought he would be helpful here in deciphering those notes."

  "Wonderful. And now he has seen Chiun and me."

  "Yes, that's true, since we're all in the same room together," Smith said dryly.

  "And you're not concerned?" Remo asked.

  "No. Barry is, well, Barry is different. He can't relate things to reality. He could learn everything about our operation, and never once understand that it involves real people in the real world. He lives in a computer-generated fantasy world. But I appreciate your concern."

  "Well, appreciate this. When you want him killed because he knows too much, you do it yourself," Remo said.

  "That will never be necessary," Smith said.

  "I think it will be. Consider yourself on notice," Remo said.

  "Thank you for sharing this with me," Smith said in a tone so bland that Remo could not tell if he was joking or not. He decided Smith wasn't; Smith never joked.

  "So let's not waste any more time," Smith said. "What have you found?"

  "You mean the bodies? You're looking at one of them," Remo said, gesturing toward the red-streaked walls and then to a dried puddle at the end of the room in which a skull sat.

  Smith gaped in amazement. "That's what's left?"

  "That and some spots on the rug. But the rug's downstairs with the other bodies."

  "The ones your asssassins are responsible for, Emperor," Chiun said proudly.

  "What did they do to warrant death?" Smith asked.

  "They attacked first," Remo said.

  "I mean before that. What were the circumstances?"

  "There weren't any circumstances. That Perriweather weirdo told us to come here, locked us up with the lunatics and took off. There were two of them, a man and a woman. They tried to have us for lunch and we wouldn't let them."

  "And they said nothing?"

  "Oh, they did," Remo said. "They said a lot."

  "What did they say?"

  "They said 'Grrrrr' and 'Naaaarrrgh' and I think they said 'Ssssssss.' Little Father, did they say 'Ssssssss'?"

  "Yes," Chiun said. "They also said 'Urrrrr.' "

  "I knew I forgot something," Remo told Smith. "They said 'Urrrrr' too."

  "The woman also?" Smith asked.

  "She was as nothing," Chiun said modestly.

  "Nothing if you call a bulldozer nothing," Remo said. "They were both as strong as gorillas. What's he doing?" He gestured toward Barry, who was kneeling on the floor scraping at the walls with something that looked like a tongue depre
ssor.

  "Preparing slides," Barry said cheerfully. He deposited the wall scrapings into a white envelope and flung his blanket expertly around his neck. "Where are the others?"

  "He know what he's doing?" Remo asked Smith skeptically.

  Smith nodded. "We'll need blood samples of the dead to check to see if it's got anything to do with the Ravits experiments."

  "Ravits? He worked on bugs," Remo said.

  "There may be a connection," Smith said. "The other bodies?"

  Remo pointed to a small round table placed strangely, upside down, in the center of the bare floor. "Under there," he said.

  As Smith moved the table aside, a swarm of flies buzzed into the room. The CURE director swatted them away with an air of distaste and peered down into the darkness.

  "How do we get down there?"

  "Take my advice, Smitty. You don't want to see the cellar of this place. Send the boy explorer there. It's a job for him and Super-Blankey."

  "What's down there?"

  "Flies, mostly. A lot of rotten meat."

  "Meat? What kind of meat?"

  "Cows, dogs, that kind. And two humans, or semihumans, if the flies haven't picked them clean already," Remo said.

  Smith shuddered.

  "I'll be glad to go, Harold," Barry said agreeably. "If you'll just hold onto one end of Blankey."

  "Harold, is it?" Remo said to Smith. "Sure, kid," he called out. "I'll give you a hand."

  He lowered Schweid into the cellar using the blanket as a rope.

  There was silence for a few minutes, then a soft exclamation.

  "Barry," Smith called, covering his face as he peered down into the opening. "Are you all right?"

  "It's fantastic," Schweid said.

  There was some shuffling around, followed by a giggle.

  "Okay. I can come up now," Barry called.

  "I was hoping you'd decide to stay," Remo mumbled as he pulled Barry up.

  Schweid came through the hole covered with flies and grinning like a loon. Smith made a halfhearted attempt to swat the flies away but Barry did not seem to notice their presence.

  "It was amazing," he said breathlessly to Smith. "You really owe it to yourself to take a look."

  "I don't think that will be necessary," Smith said, quickly moving the table back to cover the hole in the floor. "Did you take blood samples?"

  "Yes, of course. But did you notice the flies?"

  "Hard not to," Remo said.

  "How many species did you count?" Schweid asked.

  "We weren't counting," Remo said.

  "More's the pity," Schweid said, grinning triumphantly. He pulled a white envelope from his back pocket. It was filled with squirming, dying flies, squashed together in a heap.

  "Ugh," Chiun said.

  "There must have been a hundred different species down there," Barry said. "There's at least fifteen in here and this is just a quick sample."

  "Just goes to show you that a little rotten meat goes a long way," Remo said.

  "Don't you see?" Barry said. "That's what's so unusual. Almost none of these species are indigenous to this area." He looked from Smith to Remo to Chiun. "Don't you all see? The flies were brought here. The meat in the basement was supplied to feed them."

  "A fly hotel," Remo said. "Is that like a roach motel?"

  "What are you getting at, Barry?" Smith asked.

  "Somebody wanted those flies to be here, Harold."

  "Perriweather," Remo said.

  "He looked like a creature who would like flies," Chiun said. "Even if he did have a way with words. Egg-layer. Heh, heh, heh."

  "What's he talking about?" Smith asked Remo.

  "You had to be there," Remo said. "Never mind."

  "What about the papers you found?" Smith asked.

  Remo pulled a thick stack of papers out of his pocket and handed them to Smith, who looked at them and said, "They're some kind of notes."

  "I knew that," Remo said.

  Barry was peeking over Smith's shoulder. "Can I look at them, Harold?"

  "Sure," Remo said. "Show them to Blankey too." Barry spread the papers out on the floor and hunched over in the center of them, unconsciously twisting the corner of his blanket into a point and sticking it in his ear.

  "Unbelievable," he said.

  "What's unbelievable?" Smith asked.

  "I'll need the blood analyses to be sure," Barry said. "But if these papers are right, all the deaths around here are the result of a fly."

  "A lot of flies," Remo said. "We've got a whole cellar full of them."

  "No," Barry said, shaking his head. "A special kind of fly. A fly that can change the source of evolution."

  "Imagine that," Remo said.

  'If these notes are correct, Morley made the biggest discovery since the discovery of DNA," Barry said.

  "Is that anything like PDQ?" Remo asked.

  "Don't be belligerent, Remo," Smith said. "Come on, Barry. We're going back to Folcroft. I'll get you lab equipment there."

  "And us?" Remo asked.

  "Go back to the IHAEO labs," Smith said. "Until we find out if Perriweather is behind all this and until we have him under control."

  "No sweat," Remo said. "We'll have him under control."

  "How's that?" Smith said.

  "We'll just wrap him up in Blankey," Remo said.

  Chapter 18

  Waldron Perriweather III sat in the middle of the sofa in his suite at the Hotel Plaza in New York City. The jeweled box containing the desiccated body of Mother Fly rested on the arm of the brocaded sofa.

  Perriweather had moved aside the coffee table to make room for a small upright video camera mounted on a tripod. He leaned forward to adjust the focus, turned the sound level to medium, then sat back down. With his right hand, out of camera view, he tripped a level that began the camera running. He spoke earnestly, staring directly into the lens.

  "Americans. Note that I do not say 'My fellow Americans' because I am not one of your fellows, nor are you mine. Nor do I count myself as of any other nationality. My name is Waldron Perriweather the Third and I do not count myself among any people from whom murder is a daily way of life, as it is with you. For, each day, you seek to decimate the oldest and most self-sufficient type of life which has ever existed.

  "You are insect-haters all, from the housewife who carelessly, without thought, murders a struggling life on her kitchen windowsill, to the wealthy executives of the pesticide companies who deal out death in the billions and trillions each day.

  "I am accusing you on behalf of the Species Liberation Alliance, in defense of the countless small lives you snuff out hourly without thought, and worse, without remorse. I accuse you."

  He held out a bony finger, pointing it directly at the camera.

  "Take, as an example, the small housefly. Maligned throughout history, the fly ensures the renewal of the planet in a way far greater than man can even attempt. Can you, do you, eat garbage? No. You only create garbage. With your food, your disposal containers, even your very bodies after your own horrendously long tenure on earth, you make garbage. The fly lives but a moment of a human's lifespan and yet he does so much more than any human.

  "You regard yourselves as the ultimate creation of nature, but you are wrong, grossly wrong.

  "The fly is the supreme conqueror of earth. He has existed longer, his numbers are greater and his adaptability is a thousand times greater than your own."

  He lowered his head, then peered up intently toward the camera.

  "And that is what I had arranged to talk to you about today. The adaptability of the fly. A particular fly, never before seen on earth, named by me Musca perriweatheralis. The fly that will restore nature to its original balance. The fly that will become lord of the earth."

  He spoke for another fifteen minutes, then packed up the tape he had made. He placed it carefully in a box addressed to the Continental Broadcasting Company, the largest television network in America, went to the hotel l
obby and dropped it into the mailbox.

  Outside, the noise and clatter of New York City attacked his ears. People rushed by the hotel entrance, at least a hundred in two minutes.

  There were so many human beings in the world: Far too many.

  But that would end soon. Musca perriweatheralis would inherit the earth. And master it.

  Back in his suite, he stroked the dead fly's back idly as he switched on the television set for the news.

  "A bizarre report just came in from the wealthy North Shore in Massachusetts," an announcer said. "Police report that two bodies have been found brutally murdered in the home of millionaire Waldron Perriweather III."

  Perriweather smiled idly.

  "The two victims were identified as Gloria and Nathan Muswasser of Washington, D.C., and of SoHo district of New York. Police said the bodies were found in a cellar that was filthy and fly-infested and, as one officer said, 'like something out of the Dark Ages.' Police spokesmen said there is a possibility of a third murder as well. Mr. Perriweather, who is a well-known spokesman for animal-protection causes, could not be reached for comment."

  Perriweather turned off the set with angry fire in his shallow blue eyes. The Muswassers' bodies. Three dead, not five.

  "The Muswassers," he whispered in disbelief. Surely those two fools masquerading as scientists had not been able to kill Gloria and Nathan, not in their strengthened state. What had gone wrong?

  Was it possible? Had those two killed them? Just who were this Dr. Remo and Dr. Chiun?

  "Hello," came a sleepy voice at the other end of the phone line.

  "Anselmo?"

  "Yeah. Zat you, boss?"

  "I'm at the Plaza Hotel in Room 1505. Come over here immediately and come right up. Don't ask for me because I'm registered under a different name."

  "Right now?" Anselmo said.

  "Right now."

  "Ah, jeez, boss."

  "Right now. And bring Myron with you."

  When the two thugs arrived, Perriweather handed them a clear plastic container. In it were a few grains of sugar and a fly with red wings.