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  For a time during the night, Remo and Chiun had searched around the base for Roote and Arthur Ford. As expected, they had come up empty. By 3:00 a.m. the two of them had rejoined Smith at the Shock Troops lab where the CURE director had set up a clandestine temporary command center.

  Remo's disappointment was great as he stalked around the big empty tank where Elizu Roote had been imprisoned. It was his hundredth circuit since their return.

  Smith had largely recovered from his encounter with Roote. His system had been greatly shaken by the electrical discharge, but fortunately for him, most of the power had been channeled into the motor pool floor. Chiun had reasoned that Smith's heart condition was the real cause of his reaction to the relatively mild shock he had received.

  To see Smith now, one would never have known he had come in contact with someone as dangerous as Elizu Roote only a few hours before. The head of CURE sat at one of the lab workstations, lost in cyberspace. For much of the night he had been typing rapidly on his laptop.

  The Master of Sinanju sat in a lotus position on the floor near the CURE director.

  Chiun's eyes were closed. As he sat-as still as a statue-an occasional loud honking snore would emanate from the nose of the greatest assassin on the face of the planet. The Master of Sinanju was oblivious to the noise.

  This had been the division of labor for hours-Smith worked, Chiun slept and Remo paced.

  As Remo completed another circuit, the CURE director lifted his hands from the laptop keyboard. He clenched his fingers a few times, working out the kinks that had developed in his hours of ceaseless typing.

  Smith had said hardly a word to Remo since they'd brought him here. He had been working too feverishly to even speak. When the opportunity presented itself, Remo inserted himself into the sudden, silent vacuum left in the wake of the steady clatter of computer keys.

  "Any luck?" he asked, strolling up behind Smith.

  The CURE director blinked away weariness. "I have found nearly all there is to know about Arthur Ford, but I have yet to locate the man," he complained.

  "Maybe he hasn't made it home yet," Remo suggested.

  "That is likely. He lives with a friend in Bangor. The two are apparently space fantasy fanatics."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I had a warrant issued to the local FBI to search their apartment. The place was loaded with piles of science fiction bric-a-brac. Neither man was there."

  "Maybe the friend knows about Ford and Roote," Remo suggested.

  "Perhaps," Smith sighed. "He is at something called a Star Trek Convention in Los Angeles. It seems that the devotees of an old canceled television program assemble regularly around the country. To what end, I do not know."

  "I've heard of them before," Remo said dryly.

  "Really?" Smith asked, genuinely surprised. "I found the notion ludicrous. In any event, the L.A. police have been sent to collect Ford's friend. I doubt that his input will illuminate much, but we have little else to go on."

  "What about Chesterfield?" Remo asked. "If you can't give me Roote, at least let me punch that bloated crapbag's ticket."

  Smith shook his head. "General Chesterfield has fled east. He arrived at Washington National Airport earlier this morning. Beyond that, I have yet to attempt to locate him."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Because Chesterfield is a side issue. He can be dealt with in time. We must not allow ourselves to lose focus of the main objective here."

  Remo dropped into a swivel chair near Smith. "Roote," he said bitterly.

  "That is correct." Smith tapped a frustrated hand on the table next to his laptop. "General Chesterfield has created in Elizu Roote a potentially unstoppable killing machine. If he reserves his energy, he can go for weeks at a time without recharging. His bionic and biological systems are flawlessly integrated. The science that combined to create him is as brilliant as it is terrifying."

  "Tell me something I don't know, Smitty." Smith's face grew grim. "Roote's psychological make-up," he suggested.

  "What about it?"

  "He likes to kill." Before Remo could interrupt, Smith raised a hand. "It goes beyond the obvious, Remo," he said. "Roote fits the psychological profile of a serial killer to a tee. The psychosis he is displaying now has not manifested itself as a result of his physical alterations. He was most likely insane long before the general got his hands on him."

  "So Chesterfield and his pals took a stir-fried, finger-painting loony and turned him into a freaking walking power plant," Remo said flatly.

  "It is arguable who was the greater lunatic, but essentially, yes. That is the case."

  "Who here's ready to reinstitute the draft?" Remo said, shaking his head in disgust.

  Smith's sleep-deprived eyes were glazed. "A being with a combination of Roote's dangerous psychological temperament and man-made abilities was a disaster waiting to happen at the outset."

  "And now he's in the hands of some dip shit Buzz Aldrin wannabe," Remo muttered.

  "Yes," Smith said, his voice trailing off. He stared beyond Remo for a few long seconds. At last, he turned back to his computer.

  As Smith began typing, Remo was rising to his feet. He resumed his endless cycle around the huge tank.

  On the floor, the Master of Sinanju continued to snore, unconcerned.

  Chapter 19

  Earth was doomed. Everyone who didn't already know it would find out soon enough.

  It was an ecological thing. It was a political thing. It was a whole damn human race thing. The entire world was going to hell.

  People in the know realized that imminent global disaster had as much to do with the destruction of the rain forest and the polluting of the oceans as it did with the planet's leaders. And ultimately the leaders in the United States were the ones that mattered most of all. A sad fact, but true.

  For some reason unknown to Beta RAM, the world looked to America for leadership. Even those who claimed they didn't care about the opinions of the U.S. were obviously intensely jealous of the richest nation in the world. The United States set the terms for the global game. And when it fumbled the ball, the world suffered. But Beta RAM knew that this was only part of the story.

  The U.S. government was in bed with special interest groups. And no matter who was in charge in Washington, the special interests dictated the rules on a host of different topics. The results were predictable: pollution, germ warfare, nuclear proliferation, the destruction of old-growth forests.

  Further, Beta knew that behind the so-called special-interest groups was a cabal of seeming humans who controlled everything, for one evil purpose: to destroy the world. Beta RAM knew that the members of the Association of Evil were men only in appearance. In truth, they were Squiltasalien beings from the swamps of the second moon of the third planet circling Ursa Minor. Fearful of the fact that man was on the threshold of intergalactic travel, they had taken on the appearance of men in order to bring about the destruction of mankind.

  Beta had tried to warn four consecutive puppet leaders of America of this grave danger to humanity. He found to his great horror that the influence of the Association was strong. He had been mocked, harassed and-after bringing a concealed weapon to a George Bush rally back in 1992-even imprisoned.

  The only figure in recent years to express an interest in his story had been Ross Perot, but Beta RAM had hesitated to ally himself with the Texas billionaire. After all, he didn't want to appear crazy.

  Beta RAM-who had been born Bobby Jack Balbo-would have almost given up all hope, condemning the world to the whims of the Squiltas, if not for one thing. Salvion.

  Salvion was of the planet Tragg, whose inhabitants were the natural enemies of the Squiltas. In his native Traggian tongue Salvion meant "faith."

  Salvion was a being of light who had come to Beta RAM many times over the course of his life. Appearing in glowing robes, he spoke of a future for a select few humans, separate from that ordained by the Squiltas. On several occasions, Sa
lvion had even brought Beta aboard his celestial ark, taking him for rides around the cosmos.

  The trips they took together were always breathtakingly beautiful and, oddly, seemed to coincide with Beta's most intense peyote and phenobarbital sessions.

  As a result of his meetings with Salvion, Beta had withdrawn from society into the wilds of New Mexico. There, at Camp Earth he gathered around him a group of followers who awaited the inevitable end of time, when the Squiltas would succeed in their designs to destroy the planet. Only then would Salvion land with his celestial ark to shepherd the men and women of Beta RAM's camp to the safety of a distant star system. Where they would establish the paradise of New Earth.

  Until that time, all Beta RAM could do was wait. And, as the mood struck him, drink.

  The mood had hit him pretty hard lately.

  As the desert sun rose higher into the clear blue sky this day, the brilliant stabs of sunlight burst through the corrugated tin sides of Beta's tumbledown hut. The light from the yellow star Sol, around which he had travelled more than once, spilled across his sleeping eyes.

  Reluctantly Beta opened one bleary eye on the new day. He saw a foot.

  Beta blinked the eye, as if trying to clear a fuzzy sleep image from his waking thoughts.

  It was no good. The foot was still there. And it was dirty. Dark crescent moons of mud had collected beneath the too-long toenails.

  Still with only one eye open, Beta dragged his gaze all the way up the rest of the filthy, naked body. He had to scuff his cheek against his tattered surplus Army blanket in order to get as far as the face.

  When he saw who she was, he shivered in spite of the steamy heat inside the tin hut.

  His companion was one of the Indian girls who had glommed onto the hope offered at Camp Earth. Her face was as flat as a crepe and as big around as a basketball. Above her three chins, rotten teeth were exposed with each sucking, snoring breath.

  As he rolled over onto his itchy back, Beta opened his other eye. He stared at the white streaks of light slicing through the holes in the roof of the hut roof. He sighed.

  "I gotta tell Salvion. When we load up the ark for New Earth-no pigs."

  Clearing the morning phlegm from his throat, Beta RAM scanned the dirt floor for his pants.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, Beta RAM was dressed and touring the temporary shelters that comprised Camp Earth, which was erected on a flat plateau in the Caballo Mountains west of the White Sands Missile Range.

  The squalid camp was the sort of pathetic shantytown that normally sprang up across the border in Mexico, eighty miles south.

  Old car hoods, sections of discarded tin, even the hull of a broken boat were leaned together into makeshift hovels. Ratty tarpaulins and sheets decorated with cartoon characters whose popularity had faded a decade before formed the outer skin of teepees. The skeletal framework beneath consisted of broom handles and steel rods lashed together with scrap wire.

  Like Beta RAM, the men and women of Camp Earth had begun crawling out from beneath their piles of rubble to greet the new day. Before the pathetic homes, a few of the disciples of Salvion had already started breakfast.

  Rocks were formed in circles to contain crude fires of brush and twigs. Cans of everything from stew to baked beans were being warmed on metal racks. A few more enterprising individuals burned strips of fatty bacon in filthy pans.

  Beta walked past all of this activity.

  In one of his earliest visitations, Salvion had informed Beta RAM that the item that fell to Earth during the famous Roswell incident had been an escape pod from his own ship. Also on the pod was a group of Squiltas that Salvion had been conducting to a penal colony on Pluto. The evil aliens had transmitted the coordinates of the planet to their home world before being recaptured. Salvion had rounded all of them up-or so he thought.

  One had escaped, and this lone Squilta had coordinated the rise to power of the Association of Evil on Earth.

  The White Sands Missile Range eventually became a landing strip, as well as a departure point, for the Squiltas on Earth. The arrival of the end time would be made obvious by the increased activity in the desert around the secret base.

  Beta thought that the climactic moment he'd been awaiting had finally come the night before, when the lights in the sky swept the desert all around White Sands and Fort Joy. A lot of the people at Camp Earth had begun to pack up their belongings in preparation for boarding the ark. Only when their lookouts stationed in the desert below confirmed that the lights belonged to ordinary terrestrial helicopters did depression finally set in at Camp Earth. With the disappointment came the drinking.

  Walking away from the nausea-inducing breakfast smells, Beta RAM was trying to purge himself of that awful hungover feeling by pulling in deep breaths of clean mountain air.

  His head felt like a balloon that had been filled to twice its capacity.

  Blinking, tasting the film that had collected on his tongue, Beta paused at the edge of the plateau. The sight was breathtaking. It was a sheer drop down to the Rio Grande far below. In the distance the river snaked off around the side of another hill of rough rock.

  Faced with the combination of the awesome majesty of nature and the gallon of cheap whisky and beer in his otherwise empty belly, Beta RAM, Prophet of Salvion, Guardian of Camp Earth, Preparer of the Great Migration, could do only one thing. He vomited as if there were no tomorrow.

  It took more than ten seconds for the puke to hit the river. By then, Beta was already vomiting again. He puked and puked and puked some more until he thought his stomach would come up through his mouth. It was ten long minutes of painful, ceaseless retching.

  When his stomach was at last empty, Beta RAM wiped the bile from his chin. With a thick snort, he pulled back some mucus from his nose.

  "Time for breakfast." He coughed, spitting a glob of phlegm into the sparkling river.

  He turned and headed back for camp.

  Before Beta had even reached the first tin house, he knew something was wrong. The pilgrims of New Earth had abandoned their fires and breakfast plates. They were moving en masse to the mouth of the narrow road that led down to the flat desert on the other side of the rocky hill.

  Beta heard the shouted voice as he approached the rear of the crowd.

  "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!"

  The voice echoed up from the road, filtered through a tinny megaphone. The speeding jeep crested the hill a moment later, skidding to a stop near the line of vehicles belonging to the Camp Earth inhabitants.

  The men in the jeep were fellow Salvion disciples. They were part of the crews that toured the desert around the flat hill. As Camp Earth's first line of defense, they would warn the residents of any Squiltas invasion.

  Beta RAM pushed his way through the excited crowd, catching up with the breathless arrivals as they jumped from their vehicle.

  "What's going on?" Beta demanded.

  "Someone's coming!" the driver said excitedly. "We spotted him moving up the road a few minutes ago."

  Beta glanced at his disciples. "Squiltas?" he asked nervously. The people behind him withdrew in fright.

  The driver shook his head. "Human. At least he appears to be."

  "I think it might be Arthur Ford," the other man said, panting. "I couldn't see too good with the binoculars."

  Beta RAM relaxed somewhat. He knew Arthur Ford. The ufologist was not a disciple of Salvion, but at least he was a believer. But since he would not be part of the chosen few invited to board the ark, Beta had no idea what Ford would want at Camp Earth.

  A few minutes later, Ford's jeep raced up the path and squealed to a rapid stop, kicking up a cloud of sand and stones. Ford hopped out before the jeep had rocked to a stop.

  "What can the people of New Earth do for you, friend Arthur?" Beta said by way of greeting. Ford was covered with desert grime. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with black from lack of sleep.

  "We've got trouble," Ford announced seriously. "On a galactic s
cale."

  Without further warning, he reached in through the open door of his jeep. With a yank, he pulled off the blanket he had thrown over Elizu Roote.

  The pale, sweating form of the Army private hunched uncomfortably in the rear footwell of the jeep. The heat had caused red hives to erupt on his doughy white skin. Although hours had passed since his encounter with Smith at the Fort Joy motor pool, he remained unconscious.

  Beta RAM leaned over to examine the almost phosphorescent-white body. Ford had crammed Roote in the back of the Jeep so tightly, Beta couldn't see him very well.

  "Who is he?" Beta asked, turning to the ufologist.

  "An alien," Ford insisted.

  Beta raised an eyebrow. "A Squilta?" he asked. "I thought they were supposed to be amorphous," Ford said, confused.

  Some in the crowd snorted derisively at Ford's obvious ignorance.

  "They're capable of taking on human characteristics," Beta said impatiently. "Bill Gates? Need I say more?"

  Ford shook his head. "I don't think he's Squilta. At least he hasn't manifested any signs to me."

  "I'll be the judge of that," Beta announced. He ordered his followers to carry Roote into the light. They did as they were instructed, stretching the Army private out in the dirt before the jeep. Beta stooped to examine the pale, wasted form more carefully. He found the finger pads immediately.

  "What are these?" he said, awestruck.

  "Defensive system," Ford explained. "Used only when threatened by the United States military."

  A thought occurred to Beta. "All that junk going on in the desert last night, was that him?"

  Ford nodded. At this, Beta RAM whistled his approval.

  Continuing his exam, Beta found the spot of ragged flesh at the rear of Roote's neck. What little blood was present had dried.

  Beta tapped a finger against the partially exposed subcutaneous plate. It clicked.

  "No doubt about it," he said, standing. "This boy's not human."

  The people of Camp Earth accepted their leader's conclusion with surprising ease. After all, for some of them, this was not their first alien.