The Sky is Falling td-63 Read online

  "Reemer," he was told by an assistant, "we blew it."

  "Little men blow things. Big men create success from what others call disasters."

  "You can't manufacture anything with an electronic part in it," said the assistant. "You can't use the rays here in the world. The world is electronic. Good-bye. Good night. Do you have the employment section of the paper?"

  "No," said Bolt, with the gleam of a true believer in his eyes. "We have discovered that we must manufacture nonelectronic products."

  Many products were not electronic, the assistant pointed out, but none of them lent themselves to cheaper manufacture by exposure to the unfiltered rays of the sun.

  Bolt's leadership kit solved that problem. Its message was that every problem had a solution if only a person unlocked his leadership power through a simple and tried method. One should think about a subject very hard, the tape advised, and then put it out of one's mind and go to sleep. In the morning, the answer would come.

  In this hour of trial for Reemer Bolt, he did just that and the answer did come to him in the morning.

  An assistant phoned him with a suggestion. Heated sand made glass. Glass was not electronic. Glass was still used. Why not make glass at the source? Undercut the price of even an Oriental laborer.

  Thus was conceived the experiment that convinced a nuclear power that it was going to be attacked. The Sahara was chosen because it had the most sand. If the process worked, you only had to send your trucks out to the desert with a glass cutter and haul back the cheapest and perhaps the most perfect glass in the world.

  "Why most perfect?" Reemer Bolt was asked.

  "I don't know. It sounds good," he said. When the results came in he was so ecstatic he called a meeting of the board to announce an even greater breakthrough. Indeed, the initial survey showed that the glass was perhaps as clear as anything this side of a camera lens. And they had just made several hundred square miles of it. They could produce a million square miles of perfect glass every year. Forever.

  "Forever," screamed Bolt in the boardroom of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts, Inc. And then, in case anyone with a remaining eardrum had not heard him, he yelled again. "Forever."

  "Reemer," said the chairman of the board, "what happened to that wonderful car-painting procedure?"

  "A minor problem, sir. We are going to wait for that to come to its full fruition. Right now I am going to get us all our money back and then some. Once that is done we'll push ahead with the car-painting process."

  Several of the members were puzzled. No one seemed to be agreeing.

  "I will tell you why I asked," said the chairman of the board. "While the glass concept is good, by creating several hundred square miles of glass in Egypt you have just ruined the glass market for the next sixty-five years according to my calculations."

  "Can we cut the price?"

  "If they don't need as much as you have put on the market, you already have. No profit from cheap glass."

  "I see," said Bolt. He felt something strange and warm running down his pants leg.

  "Reemer, have you just wet your pants?" asked the chairman of the board.

  "No," said Bolt with all the enthusiasm of a man who understood his leadership potential. "I have just discovered a way not to go to the bathroom."

  It was a night of exhaustion. Delirious, delicious exhaustion, with every passionate nerve aroused and then contented.

  That was before Kathy made love to Remo. That was in Hanoi, going from one government office to another. From one military base to another. That was in the dark alleys while a city went mad searching for the killer among them.

  Several times the police would have gone right by if Kathy hadn't knocked over something. And then she saw them come against this wonderful, magnificent, perfect human being, and die. Sometimes their bones cracked. Sometimes death was as silent as the far edge of space. Other times, those special times when they came roaring down upon them, the bodies would go one way and the heads would go another.

  It was before dawn when Remo said, "It's not here. They don't know where it is."

  "That's too bad," said Kathy.

  "Then why do you have that silly grin on your face?" asked Remo.

  "No reason," purred Kathy. She nestled into his arm. It didn't feel very muscular. "Are you tired?"

  "I'm puzzled. These people don't know where the fluorocarbon thing is. They never heard of it."

  "That's their problem."

  "What else do you remember about it?"

  "Just that awful man in San Gauta."

  "I dunno," said Remo. They were in a warehouse marked "People's Hospital." It had been labeled that way during the Vietnam war so that when the Americans bombed the warehouses they could be accused of bombing hospitals. The reporters never mentioned that it stored rifles, not wounded.

  It still stored weapons, Remo and Kathy saw, but now they were for battles in Cambodia or on the China border.

  So much for the peace everyone had predicted if America left.

  "Are you ready to move?" asked Remo.

  "No. Let's just stay here tonight. You and me." She kissed his ear.

  "Are you tired?"

  "Yes, very."

  "I'll carry you," said Remo.

  "I'll walk. How are we going to get out of here? We're white. It's a police state. Are we going to walk out through Indochina? That will take months."

  "We'll go out through the airport."

  "I know you can get us through any guard, but they'll shoot down any plane you get to. There are no alleys to hide in. It's flat. You might make it somehow, but I'll die," said Kathy. She was still wearing the suit and blouse she had arrived in. The shoulder was ripped, but she felt this only made her sexier. She knew her own deep satisfaction had to be sending out signals to this man, making him desirable as well. After all, hadn't he suddenly taken her here into this warehouse when the killing was over?

  "Would you mind if I died?" asked Kathy. She wondered if she were acting like a little girl. She grinned coyly when she said this.

  "Sure," said Remo. She was the only one who knew anything about this mysterious device that could end life on earth.

  "Do you mean it?" She hated herself for asking that question. She'd never thought she would. She'd never thought she would feel like all the other girls in school had felt, giggly all over, fishing for any little compliment from the man she loved.

  "Sure," said Remo. "Don't worry about the airport. People only see what they're trained to see."

  "You can make us invisible?"

  "No. People don't look."

  "I thought Orientals were more sensitive to their surroundings."

  "Only compared to whites. They don't see either."

  She was amazed at how simple and logical it all was, so natural. The human eye noticed what startled it, what was different. It noticed what it was supposed to notice. The mind didn't even know what it saw. People thought they recognized others by their faces, when actually they recognized them by their walk and size and only confirmed the identification by face.

  This Kathy knew from reading. The way Remo explained it, it sounded more mystical but still logical. He said the mind was lazy, and while the eye really saw everything, the mind filtered out things. It filtered out twenty men and blurred the message into a marching column. Remo and Kathy easily joined a line of marching guards, and by being part of the mass, just moved with it. If she had dared, she would have moved her head to look into the faces and see them actually staring through her and Remo. But Remo had told her to listen to her own breathing and stay with him. That way she would remain part of the natural mass of the moving column. He told her to think of his presence.

  For Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell that was easy. She was ready to stay with this man forever. She listened to her breathing as she sensed the choking odor of burning jet fuel and felt the ground tremble with the big engines revving up. She knew she was boarding an airplane because she was climbing up. But the mi
raculous thing was that she did not feel as though she were climbing.

  Then they were in the aisle and there was a fuss over seats. The problem was that two other people did not have seats. They did not have seats because she and Remo were sitting in them. Remo settled it by showing the others two seats even the flight attendants weren't aware of in the back. The people didn't return.

  "Where did you put them?" she whispered.

  "They're okay," said Remo.

  When the flight was airborne it was discovered that a stockbroker and a tax lawyer had been stuffed into the lavatory seats.

  It was a British airplane. They had to find someone who could determine what had gone wrong, why there were two extra people for seats that did not exist when the extra people had tickets.

  Since there was a new labor contract with the British airline, a crew member who was also practiced as a mediator took charge. Remo and Kathy sat comfortably all the way across the massive Pacific to San Francisco. By the end of that flight, the mediator had formed a committee to establish who should be blamed for the failure to provide seats. The stockbroker and the tax lawyer stood the whole way, massaging where they had been pressed into the lavatory.

  At the airport, Remo dialed Smith's special number. "It ain't there, Smutty," said Remo. "Not even remotely there."

  "We have found one in the Northeast but we can't locate it. I am sure the Russians are going to attack. I am alone in this, Remo, but I know I am right."

  "What do you want me to do, Smitty?"

  "We have got to make the Russians trust us."

  "Do they trust anyone?"

  "They think we are behind the fluorocarbon beam. They are sure of it. They are sure we are using the beam to destroy them."

  "That doesn't sound like they are going to trust us."

  "They may, if we do something."

  "What?"

  "Stay there. Right on that line."

  Kathy waited contentedly by the baggage-return racks. Every once in a while she blew Remo a kiss. Men glanced at her longingly. They always did that. She had never met a man she couldn't have if he liked women. But she had never met a man until this one whom she wanted. "Wanted" was too weak a word. This was a man who was like air to her lungs and blood to her cells. This man was hers, part of her, beyond separation.

  She blew him another kiss. She knew her clothes were dirty by now. She was penniless. She had lost the sole of one shoe in Hanoi. Her undergarments had ceased to be comfortable in San Gauta. And she did not care. Kathleen O'Donnell, whose dress had been regal armor all her professional life, did not care. She had everything she needed, especially for her secret desires.

  Her only thought at that moment was whether Remo wanted children. He had mentioned something about his friend wanting him to get married and have children. Kathy could give him children. She could give him everything. And more.

  She wanted to trot over and kiss him. She wondered what people would say if he took her right there on the baggage rack. Would she mind? She would enjoy it, of course. But she wondered if she would mind what people would think.

  No, there was only one person whose opinion she cared about, and that one person was no longer herself. He had just hung up the telephone and was coming over to her. "You need money or anything?"

  "No. I don't need anything, Remo," said Kathy. "It's strange, I used to think I needed things before. But I don't now. I have everything."

  "Good," said Remo. " 'Cause I'm leaving."

  Kathy giggled. "I love your sense of humor."

  "Bye," said Rerno.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I'm leaving," said Remo. "Gotta go. Business."

  "Where?" said Kathy, suddenly realizing that he was actually leaving her. She shivered under the shock, her hands tight and trembling.

  "Gonna save the world, sweetheart. So long," said Remo.

  "What about saving the world from the destruction of the ozone shield? That's saving the world."

  "That's number two. Disasters nowadays have to wait in line."

  "How can it be number two? It can make the entire world unlivable."

  "Not right away," said Remo. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and headed for an Aeroflot office. The way Smith had set this up, there was a chance, a fair chance, that even Sinanju might fail. In his effort to save the country, he had all but told Russia that he was sending a man in.

  "Thanks a lot," Remo had said when he heard the plan the President of the United States had approved. "But how do you expect me to come out of this alive?"

  "You can do anything, it seems, Remo."

  "Except what you set up for me. You're going to get me killed."

  "We have to risk that."

  "Thanks."

  "Look, Remo. If you don't make it, none of us will make it."

  "Then kiss your bippee good-bye."

  "You'll make it, Remo," said Smith.

  Remo had given a little laugh and hung up. That was before he kissed Kathy good-bye and before he went to the Aeroflot office. He had looked at a picture of the crude Aeroflot jet, remembered how many men Russia was willing to lose in the Second World War, and then slowly backed away. Very slowly. He could not use that plane.

  Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell watched Remo leave. She waited, believing that he would return. She told herself that he was playing a joke on her, a cruel joke. He would come back and she would insist that he never play that joke on her again.

  Do anything he wanted to her, she would plead, but not that. Never leave her like that again. Several men stopped to talk to her, seeing she was alone. A few pimps at the airport offered her work.

  When she let out a scream that halted everyone at the baggage racks, she acknowledged that he had done it. He had actually left her.

  Someone tried to quiet her. She poked her nails into his eyes. Airport police came running. She poked them, too. They wrestled her into a straitjacket. Someone gave her a sedative. With the chemicals heavily drugging her mind, she felt only a roaring, all-consuming hate. Even drugged, she was planning her revenge.

  Someone found her passport on her body. They wondered how she had just gotten a British entry stamp, without the debarkation stamp from their customs.

  She told them a story. She told them several stories. She got Reemer Bolt on the telephone. Bolt's voice cracked as he was trying to explain that everything was not lost.

  Kathy told him to contact the lawyers of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. She told him to contact her banker. She told him how much money to wire. She told him to get her out of there. She told him the magic words: "Everything is going to be all right, Reemer."

  "Of course, but how?"

  "I am taking over," she said.

  "Your project? Your responsibility?"

  "Of course, Reemer."

  "You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said Reemer Bolt, realizing there was a way out of this mess.

  Thus when the technicians started complaining later that day that Dr. D'Donnell was going to destroy the world, Reemer Bolt had little sympathy for them.

  Kathy, returning on the first flight back east, had stormed into Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts and, without even a change of clothes, begun ordering the technicians around.

  Bolt happily endorsed everything. But soon the technicians began sneaking out of the beam generator station with tales of what was going on.

  "Mr. Bolt, did you know that she has placed a locked wide arc on the beam?"

  "No. Frankly, I don't care," said Bolt. "It's Dr. O'Donnell's project, and what she does with it is her business. I tried to save it with marketing directions, but I don't know if I can do anything now."

  Then another technician entered Reemer Bolt's office. "Did you know she is building a second beam generator?"

  "Thank you for telling me," said Bolt, and promptly began preparing a memo from him to Kathy with another copy to the board of directors. That memo would suggest that they first make one beam generator feasible befor
e they invest in another.

  All the technicians came in on the next one:

  "Did you know that she is doing a central eclipse with a locked perpendicular arc on the second generator?"

  "No, I didn't," said Bolt with great thoughtfulness. "But I do resent your coming to me with tales about another officer of this corporation. Underhandedness is not the way Reemer Bolt likes to do business."

  "Well, for one thing, if she turns on that second generator, none of us is going to be able to get out alive."

  "What about the radiation suits?"

  "They're only good for standing near it. And the arc she's going to set up for that second one can wipe out all life from here to Boston."

  "Keep up the good work," said Bolt, who immediately set about establishing a Rhode Island branch of the corporation, something he was going to have to do before she turned on the second beam.

  In the laboratories Kathy O'Donnell heard all the complaints. The technicians' objections became increasingly shrill. And she cared not a whit for any of these people. She hardly even heard them. She didn't even enjoy the obvious suffering of one of the technicians as he described the horror she could inflict on the world with these changes and additions to the program.

  Kathy O'Donnell did not care. Remo had left her.

  Everyone was going to pay for it, especially Remo.

  Chapter 17

  Ironically, it was Chiun's understanding of Russia that might get Remo killed. Smith had no choice. That was the horror of these great events. Everyone was really helpless to do anything but try to avoid the megadeaths they all faced.

  Smith had wanted Chiun to penetrate Russia. Even now he would rather have launched Chiun into Russia than Remo. But Remo was all he had. No one knew where Chiun was or what he was doing. Smith reviewed what Chiun knew about Russia. Smith had made the correct move. The rest of the government was wrong.

  Chiun, in some strange way, read the Russians like children read comic books. It was all clear to him. Every move that seemed baffling and threatening to the West was like a colorful, unmistakably simple design to Chiun.