Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

  "Damn," said Ferris. "I'm so close."

  "You're close to being shut down," said a voice at his side.

  Ferris jumped.

  "Oh, Mr. Miller. I didn't hear you."

  "Ferris, what's this about your secretary leaving in tears yesterday?"

  "We had an argument," said Ferris absently, removing a panel on the side of the nebulizer to get at the inside workings.

  "She claims you tried to get into her pants."

  "Actually, I succeeded."

  "In this very room, from what I hear."

  "She enjoyed it. Or so she claimed at the time."

  "So you fired her after you had your way with her? Is that it? Stop fiddling with that thing and look me in the eye when I talk to you."

  "Can we discuss this later? I think I'm almost there."

  "You're almost out the door, is where you are, Ferris."

  "Since when is sleeping with my secretary a crime? Almost everybody in this company sleeps with some other worker. At least I don't sleep with members of my own sex.

  "We can live with that," Ogden Miller said nastily. "What we can't live with is a discrimination suit. She claims you fired her for religious reasons."

  "She was Jewish. She admitted it. If I'd known it beforehand, I wouldn't have slept with her. Or hired her in the first place."

  "You'd damn well better have a stronger excuse than that. We have big government contracts that can be taken away over something like this."

  "It's not my fault," said Ferris forlornly. "Her last name was Hart. What kind of a Jewish name is that? Scnnebody ought to give them badges, so we can tell them apart or something."

  "Someone tried that. I think his name was Hitler. What's gotten into you?"

  "Could you stand aside? I think I have the setting synchronized again."

  "You're out of sync, Ferris. That's your problem."

  "Out of sync," Ferris said, closing the panel. "Maybe that's it. In sync for A and B, out of sync for AB. It might work."

  "What might work?"

  "Watch," said Ferris D'Orr, replacing the A and B trays with identical trays and placing new billets in each tray.

  The tray marked A is alpha-phase titanium," Ferris said as he hit the button.

  The billet liquefied.

  "So what?" said Miller. "We already know you can melt titanium with a laser. It doesn't matter. The metal's too brittle to use now. It's been exposed to air."

  "This isn't a laser."

  "Yeah?"

  "It's a nebulizer. It doesn't use heat."

  "No heat," said Miller thoughtfully, taking a cigar out of his mouth.

  "Do you feel any heat?"

  "Now that you mention it, no."

  "Put your hand in front of the nozzle."

  "No, thanks."

  "Then hold this button down while I put my hand in front of the thing."

  Ferris waved his hand in front of the nozzle. He grinned.

  "Microwaves?" asked Ogden Miller.

  Ferris shook his head. "They'd cook my hand to hamburger. It's sonic."

  "No heat at all?"

  "Watch," said Ferris, walking to the A tray. He dipped his index finger in and brought it out dripping liquid titanium.

  "Oh my God," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "I'll get a doctor."

  He was halfway out of the room when Ferris got in his way.

  "Touch the metal," he said, holding his metal-coated finger under Miller's nose.

  Gingerly Miller felt the metal. It was hard, cold. And as Ferris pulled the thin covering off his fingernails, malleable. Definitely malleable.

  "Not brittle?" asked Miller incredulously.

  "Not brittle at all." Ferris grinned.

  "Do you realize what this means? No more superplastic forming. We can pour the billets directly into molds. Like steel."

  "Better," said Ferris D'Orr. "We can skip the mill stage altogether. The nebulizer will leach the raw titanium from rock. We can melt and remelt it like it was taffy. "

  "This thing will do that?"

  "That's not all," said Ferris, pulling a square block off a shelf. He handed it over.

  "What's this?"

  "Yesterday, it was two rectangular forms. Pure titanium."

  "I don't see any weld seams."

  "Weld seams are yesterday. Like the 78 RPM record. Or dry-box welding."

  "No more dry-box welding?" Ogden Miller's voice was tiny, like a child's.

  Ferris nodded. "You can throw them all out-as soon as I lick the alpha-beta-phase titanium problem."

  "Can you?"

  The two men walked over to the nebulizer. "Something you just said makes me think I can," Ferris D'Orr said as he played with the micrometer settings. "As you know, titanium in the alpha phase has its atoms arranged in a hexagonal formation. When the metal is heated above 885 degrees Centigrade, it's transformed into body-centered cubic beta titanium."

  "I don't know that technical stuff. I don't have to. I'm the president."

  "But you do know that alpha-beta titanium is the best for commercial use?"

  "I've heard it said, yeah."

  "This device, through focused ultrasound, causes the metal to vibrate so the atomic structure is, to put it in layman's terms, discombobulated. It falls into a liquid state without heat or loss of material."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that. But alpha-beta titanium won't respond to the nebulizer. I've spent the last two weeks trying every possible vibratory setting to get the same reaction. It's like trying to crack a safe. You know the tumblers will respond if you hit the right combination. You just have to keep searching for that exact number sequence."

  "Well, keep searching."

  "If alpha titanium discombobulates when exposed to synchronized frequencies, then might not alpha-beta-phase titanium respond to out-of-sync vibrations?"

  "You're the whiz kid. You tell me."

  "No, I'll show you."

  And Ferris D'Orr got to work.

  Ogden Miller, president of Titanic Titanium Technologies, Inc., pulled up a stool and lit another cigar. His face shone like a wet light bulb; his eyes glazed in thought. He had visions of his company dominating America's defense and aerospace programs into the twenty-first century. Perhaps beyond. This was big. It was bigger than big. It was a metallurgical revolution. He had visions of a two-page ad in the next Aviation Week announcing the first one-to-one buy-to-fly ratio in metallurgical history. And it had been created on Titanic Titanium company time. Which meant that Ogden Miller owned it. If it worked on alpha-beta titanium, that is.

  Under his superior's watchful eye, Ferris D'Orr worked through lunch. He worked past five o'clock. And he worked well into the evening, setting and resetting the micrometer dials and triggering the nebulizer, without result.

  At exactly 9:48 eastern standard time, the billet in the AB tray liquefied.

  The two men, their eyes bloodshot from hours of staring at that stubborn chunk of bluish metal, blinked furiously.

  "Did it melt?" whispered Miller. "My eyes tell me it did."

  "I don't trust them."

  "Mine neither."

  "Do you want to dip your finger into it, or should I?"

  "I want the honor this time."

  Ogden Miller walked to the AB tray and carefully touched the cool surface of the bluish material in the tray. It shimmered. It felt cool to his touch, like a very dense pudding. When he lifted out his finger, it gleamed silvery-gray and the puddinglike stuff plopped down into the tray, one fabulous drop at a time.

  Ogden Miller looked back at Ferris D'Orr. "AB titanium. You're certain?"

  "We did it!" Ferris howled. "We can pour titanium into molds like steel."

  "We can forge it, weld it. Hell, we can practically drink it!"

  "I think that would be going too far; Mr. Miller."

  "Well, Ferris, we can drink champagne, can't we? Get those out-of-sync settings down on paper and we'll celebrate."

&
nbsp; "What about that matter?"

  "What matter?"

  "The secretary."

  "Hell with her," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "Let her sue. We'll settle out of court and still be billions in the black."

  "Billions," said Ferris D'Orr under his breath.

  "Billions."

  Chapter 8

  Remo Williams awoke with the rain.

  Or rather, the rain woke Remo Williams. He had spent the night in his unfinished future home, sleeping on the hard floor and collecting a few splinters from the unplaned wood. The rain started shortly after dawn, a light sprinkle, and pattered on his sleeping form.

  A fat droplet splashed on Remo's high cheek and rilled into his parted mouth. He came to his feet, tasting the cool, sweet drop. It was different from the rain in America, which tasted brackish and full of chemicals. He threw his head back to catch more drops.

  Today, Remo decided, he would thatch the roof. Then he remembered that he didn't know how.

  Remo reluctantly made his way through the mud to the House of the Masters, which shone like a slick jewel in the rain.

  Remo knocked first. There was no answer. "C'mon, Chiun."

  He knocked again, and receiving no reply, focused on his breathing. A Westerner, straining to hear better, concentrates on his ears. But that tenses the sensitive eardrums and is counterproductive. By focusing his breathing, Remo relaxed his body and attuned it to his surroundings.

  Remo's relaxed but very sensitive ears told him that Chiun was not inside the house.

  "Anyone see Chiun?" Remo asked of the two women walking by with burdens of cordwood.

  They smiled at him and shook their heads no.

  Remo shrugged. He tried the door. It was not locked and he went in.

  Everything was as before; heaps of jewels and bowls of pearls were scattered across the floor. On the taboret beside Chiun's low throne there was a piece of parchment. Even across the room, Remo recognized his name, written in English.

  Remo snatched up the paper. To Remo the Unfair:

  Know that I do not fault you, my son, for the misfortune that has recently befallen me, the Master of Sinanju, who has lifted you up from the muck of a foreign land and raised you to perfection. That you have never thanked me for my sacrifices is of no moment, I do not hold this against you. Nor do I fault you for the manner in which you have stolen the affection of my people. It is their affection to give, and how could they resist the insidious blandishments of one who has been trained by Chiun-whom I know you will refer to in the histories that you will write as Chiun the Great. Not that I am telling you your business. Write the histories as you see fit.

  Do not worry about me now that I have gone from Sinanju. I am in the evening of my life, and my work is done. I would stay in the village I have selflessly supported, but no one wants an old man, not even to honor for his great accomplishments. But I did not do the work of my House to be honored, but to continue my line. And now you will take up that burden from my drooping shoulders. May you bear many fine sons, Remo, and may none of them visit upon you the ingratitude and indignities which have been my sorry lot.

  The village is yours. The House of the Masters is yours. Mah-Li is yours-although I expect you to honor the traditional engagement period. I do not blame you for casting me aside like an old sandal and lavishing your fickle affections upon Mah-Li-formerly known as Mah-Li the Beast-for she is young like you, and youth never appreciates the company of the stooped and the elderly, for it reminds them of the loneliness and infinnities that lie in store for them. Sometimes deservedly so.

  Build your toilets, Remo. As many as you like. Make them big enough to swim in. I grant you my permission. And condoms. Build those too. May the shoreline of Sinanju boast condoms taller than any known in the modern world, as a true testament to the glory of Remo the Unfair, latest Master of Sinanju.

  I go now to live in another land-the only land in which I have known contentment and the respect of a fair and generous emperor.

  P.S. Do not touch capital. Spend all the gold you wish, but do not sell any treasure. The gold exists for the use of the Master, but the treasure belongs to Sinanju.

  P.P.S. And do not place your trust in the villagers. Not even Mah-Li. They are fickle. Like you. And they do not love you, you know, but only covet your gold.

  The note was signed with the bisected trapezoid that was the symbol of the House of Sinanju.

  "Oh, great," said Remo in the emptiness. He plunged into the next room, where Chiun kept his most personal effects. They were stored in fourteen steamer trunks, all of them open. There were no closets in Sinanju. It was another improvement Remo had hoped to make.

  All fourteen steamer trunks were still there. The note, therefore, had to be a bluff. Chiun would never leave without his steamer trunks. Remo checked Chiun's kimono trunk. There were three garments missing, a gray traveling robe, a sleeping robe, and the blue-and-gold kimono favored for wear when Masters met with former emperors.

  "He really has gone," Remo said dully.

  And it was true. Remo turned out the whole village. Every hut, every hovel, was checked. Chiun was nowhere to be found.

  "What does this mean?" asked Mah-Li, after the truth became clear.

  "Chiun's gone," Remo said. "He left during the middle of the night."

  "But why would he leave? This is his home. He has longed for Sinanju ever since he departed for America."

  "I think he felt left out," Remo said at last.

  The villagers of Sinanju were distraught. The women wept. The men howled their anguish to the sky. The children, frightened by the sounds, ran and hid. All had the same plaintive cry. All asked the same burning question. All feared the answer.

  It was Pullyang, the caretaker, who addressed it to the new Master, Remo.

  "Did he take the treasure with him?"

  And when Remo barked, "No!" joy filled the village like the lifting of storm clouds.

  "Shame, shame on you all," scolded Mah-Li. "The Master Chiun has protected us and fed us for as long as most of us have lived our lives. Shame that you should be so uncaring."

  "Thanks, Mah-Li," said Remo, as the villagers slinked away.

  "But where would the Master go?" she asked in a quieter voice.

  Remo was standing in the mud outside of Chiun's house when the question was asked. The light rain was steadily obliterating any possible trace of footsteps, and the Master of Sinanju, whose step would not wrinkle a silk-sheeted bed, never left a discernible trail anyway.

  But, oddly, there were traces visible in the melting mud. A deeper footstep here, a faint thread of gray kimono silk there. Could Chiun be so upset, Remo wandered, that he did not take the usual care in walking?

  With the curious villagers trailing behind him, Remo retraced Chiun's path out of the village and up the lone trail through the rocks to the one road leading in and out of the village.

  At the crest of the hill, Remo looked down the dirt road, which, at a respectful distance, widened into three black highways, built by the leader of the People's Republic of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, to atone for a transgression against Sinanju made not long ago. One highway ran east; the others veered north and south.

  Chiun's sandaled footsteps led as far as the end of the dirt road. Remo saw faint wet imprints of his steps at the beginning of the south highway.

  Chiun had gone to Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. And from there, who knew?

  What was it Chiun had written? "I go now to live in another land-the only land in which I have known contentment and the respect of a fair and generous emperor." Normally that would have been Persia, but even Chiun admitted that Persia was a mess these days, ruled by priests, not true rulers. China, then. No, the Chinese were thieves, according to Chiun. Japan? Worse. When Remo had eliminated the Pacific rim and Europe from his mind, only Africa and North America were left.

  Could Chiun have meant America?

  The farmer from Sunchon would have b
een glad to give the elderly wise man with the stovepipe hat a ride, he said.

  "Then why do you not stop?" Chinn asked, walking alongside.

  "I have no room in my cart," was the reply. The cart was drawn by a lone bullock. "See? It is full of barley, which I am taking to market."

  Chiun, without breaking stride, peered into the square back of the two-wheeled cart. Heaps of barley lay there, soaking up the light rain.

  "It is good barley. Do you mind if I walk with you?" asked Chiun innocently.

  "If you wish, stranger."

  "I am no stranger," corrected Chiun. "Every man knows me."

  "I do not," the farmer said reasonably.

  And because Chiun was traveling incognito, he did not tell the farmer who he was. Any who wished to follow him would have to work at it. Not that anyone would.

  After a time, the farmer noticed that the tired bullock was stepping more smartly. The shower had tapered off and the clouds were parting in the sky. It was going to be a good day after all. Then, realizing that the old wise man had been silent too long, he looked back to see if he still walked beside the cart.

  He did not. He was placidly sitting in the rear of the cart. The empty cart.

  "Where is my barley?" the farmer screeched, pulling the bullock to a halt.

  "You have a defective cart," said Chinn evenly. "It sprang a leak." The farmer then noticed the trail of barley beans-a single ragged line extending down the highway back to the West Korea Bay.

  "Why did you not tell me?" The farmer was fairly jumping up and down. His conical hat fell to the asphalt.

  Chiun shrugged. "You did not ask."

  "What will I do?" wailed the farmer. "I cannot pick them up one by one. I am ruined."

  "No, only your cart is ruined," said Chiun. "Take me to Pyongyang airport and I will give you a gold coin."

  "Two gold coins," said the farmer.

  "Do not press your luck," warned Chiun, arranging his traveling kimono so that it covered the fingernail-size hole that had appeared in the bottom of the cart, just wide enough to let one barley bean at a time fall out, like the grains of sand through the neck of an hourglass. "It is fortunate that I happened to be traveling with you at this unhappy time."