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  "No," said Remo.

  "We will ask him anyway."

  But that night, Smith arrived gaunt and worried. Remo had never seen the cold and precise automaton looking so haggard.

  "This must be stopped," he said.

  "Yes, O Emperor. Your enemies are our enemies," said Chiun, whose ancestors for thousands of years had worked for emperors and who refused to believe that Smith was not planning to become emperor of America himself.

  At one time, Remo had tried to argue with Chiun that there were now laws and governments and one person no longer controlled everything through birth and intrigue, but Chiun had said, "There is only one form of government. There are just many different names. You wait. The day will come when Smith asks us to remove anybody who stands above him in the government of your country."

  Now Chiun was asking Smith which enemy could be removed.

  "I don't know. For the love of Maude, I don't know. It just makes no sense. It is the most destructive and purposeless act I can imagine. There is no reason for it."

  "Your enemies are madmen. We will eliminate the dogs," said Chiun and then, in a somber tone, recited something to Remo, which, if one did not know Korean, would sound as if the Master were energizing his pupil to the importance of the moment.

  If one understood Korean, one would have heard: "I 31

  wonder what nonsense has gotten this snow face so concerned this time?"

  "What is it, Smitty?" asked Remo with real care. He leaned forward in his seat. He respected Smith. He respected his integrity and his competence. He just found working for him very difficult, because the man was normally cold beyond reason.

  This time, Smith seemed distracted.

  "Excuse me, I haven't slept for days. What appalls me is the utter senselessness of it, the purposelessness of it," said Smith.

  "Lots of things are crazy, Smitty," Remo said.

  "Yes. Crazy people doing crazy things. But what happens when you have scientists, backed by what appears to be enormous wealth, all dedicated to the most gigantic act of vandalism I have ever seen? It can destroy everything valuable in the world."

  "Just relax," Remo said, and then put a hand on the other man's chest and worked the spine with the other hand, enabling Smith's breath to work for him instead of against him. "Just breathe the way you feel. Just let the breath go. Let it go."

  The tension eased out of the parched lemony face, and a settling calm came with the deep breathing.

  "That's better than a tranquilizer, Remo. How did you do it?"

  "Your essence turned on itself," explained Chiun.

  "I don't understand your techniques, Master of Sinanju," said Smith.

  Chiun said to Remo in Korean, "Whites never do."

  "All right," Smith said. "This is what we have. Our computers are integrated with computers all over the world, a network of interlocking systems that we can pull information from."

  "I don't understand that stuff too well," Remo said.

  "Imagine a gigantic feeder system with components integrated," Smith said.

  "Ah, so," said Chiun, who Remo knew understood even less than he.

  Smith said, "Our computers pick up and analyze 32

  things according to predetermined patterns. Things to look for. Just as a hunter will pick up trails or a cat can sense a leaf rustling. Our computers do the same, especially through movements of money. And one of the computers picked up a massive amount of money being rolled into a corporation called Puressence."

  "An evil name if ever there was one," Chiun said.

  "We tapped into Puressence and literally stole a payroll. They had on it a collection of scientists all from one area, and automatically the computer did another rundown, and we found out that scientists in that field who didn't go to work for Puressence were being systematically murdered over this past year. That field is the new fast-breeder bacteria. The bacteria created to consume oil spills."

  Smith paused to let the fact sink in.

  "Please don't panic, Smitty, but I just don't see the problem," said Remo.

  "The problem is absolutely clear," Chiun said. "The dangerous fast-breeder bacteria can destroy everything valuable in the world."

  "That's right," said Smith, happily surprised. Chiun usually did not understand American matters.

  Remo looked quizzically at Chiun, and in Korean Chiun said to him, "Pretend this is important. Look how worried Smith is. Nod your head and just repeat what he says as though you think it is vital. See how much better he feels now that you seem to share his senseless panic."

  Remo shook his head.

  "Smitty, I don't understand."

  "Maybe Chiun can explain better," Smith said.

  "No, no, my Emperor. Your words ring like bells of crystal compared to my meager utterances," Chiun said. "Please proceed."

  "Originally, these bacteria were designed to clean up oil spills. They would feast on the oil spills in the ocean and clean them up. But it was all slow and expensive, and they never could really get a bacterium powerful enough for the really big spills."

  33

  "That I can follow. So what's the problem?" "The problem came with the solution. Scientists created a bacterium that, while it fed on the oil, also reproduced itself. They started experimenting with bacteria that bred faster and faster until they had one that reproduced itself every thirty seconds if it had enough petroleum to feed on. And that was bad enough, but they came up with a fast breeder that was anaerobic."

  "Anaerobic," shrieked Chiun. "The merciless fiends." And then, because he did not understand the word, he asked Remo what anaerobic meant. Remo thought he knew. It sounded like something to do with exercise, but he wasn't sure.

  "In case you don't know, Remo," Smith said, "anaerobic means without oxygen. This new fast-breeder bacterium does not need oxygen to function. It can breed and consume petroleum without using air. And that was the last step."

  "Smitty, what are we getting at?"

  "We're getting at the probable end of civilization as we know it," said Smith.

  "The fiends," said Chiun.

  "How?" asked Remo.

  •Through anaerobic, of course," said Chiun.

  "Exactly," said Smith. "You see, Remo, Chiun has seen that this rapid-breeder bacterium can remove all the oil in the world. It can feed underground on all our oil deposits. No oil, no gas, no plastics, no industry."

  "If somebody goes around to all the wells and drops in this stuff," said Remo. "But obviously they're not going to because then they couldn't shake down the oil industry, right? Someone's threatening to use this stuff to shake down the oil barons, right?"

  "I wish that were the case. Then they could just be paid off. And the price increased at the pumps. No. What our computers ultimately picked up was financial backing flowing in fast enough to allow anaerobic fast-breeder bacteria to be reproduced on a scale grand enough to remove the world's energy. We would be violently thrown back to a world without planes or cars

  34

  or plastics or hospitals or anything we have come to know as civilization."

  Chiun nodded gravely, but to Remo he said in Korean, "Then what is the problem?"

  Remo answered that the problem was the destruction of almost everything he and Smith loved. Chiun answered that he didn't see that as a problem, he saw tEat as a solution. He thought the Western world had created too many amateur assassins. Now, that was a problem.

  "So somebody is going to remove all the world's oil deposits," said Remo. "And everything else has failed to stop him, right? Okay. Where is this Puressence?"

  "It's a box number in Delaware. We thought we located its real headquarters, but then we lost it. Right now, it seems to have an ability to hide itself in computer systems. But we know that's impossible because somebody has got to be behind the computer. Somebody has got be profiting from this. But the nerve-shattering fact is we don't know how. We have no reason for anyone to want all the world's oil energy to be removed."

>   And then Remo fully understood what had so unnerved Smith, the straight-spine, pure-soul cold pillar of probity. It was that underneath this impending disaster, there was no reason for it.

  Smith had realized he might be facing massive destruction just on someone's whim. And he didn't know how to fight whims.

  "I am sure there's a rationale behind this," Remo reassured Smith. "Somebody wants to enslave somebody else or make some enormous profit or something. We just haven't figured it out yet."

  "I hope so," Smith said. "We don't know why he is doing what he is doing. But we do know what. And we do know where he would have to strike again."

  It was Smith's theory that this enemy had removed all scientists in that particular area of bacterial research so that there would be no one left to come up with a formula to combat the rapid-breeder bacteria. Smith

  35

  was sure that if two scientists appeared at a university with credentials as scientists in bacteria research, whoever was behind this looming world disaster would have to come at those two. The two would be Remo and Chiun. "Don't sweat, Smitty," Remo said. "Once he reaches out a hand at us, we'll take it off."

  "That's not what worries me. What worries me is that if anyone at the Massachusetts University of Technology should recognize that you are not scientists, whoever is behind this thing will simply ignore you and go safely about destroying the industrial world. It's not your killing ability that's going to be tested here but, I am afraid, your knowledge of science."

  "There is nothing to worry about," said Chiun. "We will show we understand anaerobic better than any scientist. We will show how long we can hold our breaths."

  In Korean, he said to Remo, "While he is weakened, ask him if he knows any television producers." "Not now," said Remo. "It's the wrong time." "White men always have time for nonsense," Chiun said, "but never any time for beauty."

  36

  Chapter Three

  "What's it to you?" said the thin man with thick wrists and an easy way of sitting on the laboratory table, so that he seemed not so much sitting on the table as holding it on the floor. The young professor and his Oriental associate had gotten a prime corner office at Massachusetts University of Technology, and Dr. Woldemar Keating wanted to know how someone could just arrive that morning at MUT and get a corner office. That had happened in the past only with people who taught black studies and History of White Racism and Intergroup Inequities in a Diseased Capitalist Society and all the other Mickey Mouse courses that colleges had offered through the seventies until the administrators had begun to realize that their fund-raising letters to alumni were going unanswered because their alumni could no longer read.

  No. Nowadays to get a corner office right away, they had to be famous. Or know someone. Dr. Woldemar Keating wanted to know which. Not that he was jealous. He certainly wasn't that sort.

  "Just curious," he said.

  "We do special work in the rapid-breeding anaerobic bacteria stuff," said Remo.

  "Oh. Petroleum boys. Well, we certainly won't be able to keep you very long," said Dr. Keating. "I suppose you got the office because of that."

  "We got it because we're worth it. Have you ever 37

  thought that the reason you might not have this sort of office is that you're not worth it?" asked Remo.

  "That's a rather negative way of looking at things. I've never heard of you."

  "Maybe that's why you don't have a corner office," said Remo.

  Dr. Keating watched the Oriental raise a single finger to attract attention. The Oriental gestured for Dr. Keating to sit down, then brought forth a small mirror from the folds of his robes and put it to his lips. He motioned for Dr. Keating to look at his watch. Keating waited twenty minutes in silence. He saw no moisture on the mirror. That meant the man wasn't breathing. This was impossible for a person to do for a half-hour, and Keating was sure they had some sort of mechanical device to sneak oxygen into the bloodstream safely. He was waiting to see how they did it.

  But after a half-hour, the Oriental only nodded and began breathing again.

  "What was that?" asked Dr. Keating.

  "Anaerobic," said Chiun. "We are the authorities on anaerobic."

  "Really, you have some device that allows you to function without oxygen."

  "Yes," said Chiun. "It is the balance between negativity and positivity, so that the body is unneeding of anything, a perfect single unity."

  "Of course," Keating said. "Ions. The valences of ions. Yes." And Remo realized somehow that the breathing principle of Sinanju also held true for some sort of scientific principle.

  "Well, you certainly are real. I must admit that, and I apologize for the fact that I suspected you were without academic credentials," said Dr. Keating.

  "A credential," said Chiun, "is only someone else's suspicion of one's worth. I do not see anyone in this place worthy of understanding who and what I am."

  "I must say you're honest," said Dr. Keating. "Everybody else here at MUT thinks that way, but no one

  38

  really gets around to saying it. By the way, you're in a prime field. And you're lucky."

  "I heard a few scientists in this field were killed," said Remo. "That doesn't sound lucky to me."

  "Those are only the ones who stayed here. Those who took the jobs really did well, I hear. The envy of everyone. Full research facilities. Estates to live on, servants, promises of full freedom of research for whatever they wanted."

  "How do you know what the offer was?" Remo asked.

  "Because I heard them talking before they left."

  "For where?"

  "I don't know," said Dr. Keating.

  "You know the kind of benefits they get, but you don't know where they get them? That's kind of hard to believe."

  "I don't know where they went because none of them ever knew before they went. I do know that they found their jobs just watching and reading the news. They all said there was something in the news that let them know where the positions were. They could figure it out for themselves. Damn lucky petroleum guys."

  "In the papers, television, what? Where did they see whatever they saw?" Remo asked.

  "The news is all I know. You know, the fast breeder cleans up oil. I always figured they must have seen something about the Middle East or oil or something that told them who to contact."

  "Pretty peculiar way to recruit."

  "At what was being offered, they could have pasted their applications on the bottoms of septic tanks, and people would still swim down to fill them out," Keating said. "I wish someone would make those sorts of offers to astrophysicists."

  "You're an astrophysicist," said Remo. He didn't like the smell of this laboratory. It overlooked the Charles River with Boston on the other side, a quaint city with traffic jams and apparently a disproportionate

  39

  sense of its own worth. He had been told it thought of itself as the new Athens because of all its universities.

  Chiun had pointed out they if the city proclaimed itself the new Athens, then it was an imitation and all imitations were second rate. In the history of the service of Sinanju to emperors and kings, none had ever recorded that Athens considered itself the Babylon of the West or that Rome ever considered itself the Cairo of the Northern Mediterranean. Things that were good, Chiun said, like the pure stroke of the assassin's hand, were good unto themselves. They were not anything else but what they were.

  "So stop trying to make me a Korean, Little Father," Remo had answered.

  "That is different," said Chiun. "Because we will not make you a second-rate Korean, we will make you a first-rate Korean."

  "I'm not Korean, Little Father. I don't want to be Korean."

  "The first is an accident of birth," Chiun had said. "But the latter is a disaster of attitude."

  "Other than you, Chiun," Remo had said, "I can take any Korean or groups of Koreans, and you know it. And you know who the next master of Sinanju must be."

  "That
is why you must learn to be Korean," Chiun had said. "It proves my point." And the Master of Sinanju spoke no more.

  When he said he had proved a point, Chiun really meant, Remo had come to understand, that the Master of Sinanju had no more good arguments and that the subject would not only not be discussed anymore, it wouldn't even be listened to.

  So there they were in the laboratory of MUT, with the astrophysicist babbling away and Chiun looking upon him like some form of local American native and Remo staring at the Charles River.

  "Do you understand what I mean?" asked Dr. Keating.

  "Sure," said Remo, noticing how sailboats seemed to 40

  puff and glide with the wind. They almost had the balance of a good stroke, except for the dislocations at the tiller, which meant the hand of conscious thought was interrupting the smooth flow of nature.

  "There will be some form of communication to you in the media. I certainly wish that happened to astrophysicists," said Dr. Keating.

  "Swell," said Remo.

  "Do you hold your breath?" asked Chiun. "Ever? Want me to do it again?"

  Dr. Keating quickly left the corner laboratory, which he knew he would never get at MUT, and returned to his own office.

  Inside the right-hand drawer of his desk was a black metal cylinder. When this cylinder was placed over the speaker of his phone, it beeped out a dialing signal for a number Dr. Keating did not know. He once tried analyzing the beeps, comparing them to the tones of the normal pushbutton telephone. But it was useless. This was an entirely different set of sounds, perhaps a whole separate phone system that the phone company never knew existed.

  Dr. Keating made his call and read in the names of the two new professors and his analysis. Yes, they were strange, but he believed they definitely were valid scientists in the discipline of rapid-breeder bacteria.

  "Also, according to standing instructions of yours, I have informed them.that they should observe local media for a message of great importance to them," said Dr. Keating before hanging up.