Brain Storm td-112 Read online

  "Aiyeee!" Chiun screeched. "What is this refuse?"

  Remo took up a haughty tone. "I'll have you know that is what passes for white rice at one of the most talked-about restaurants in New York City."

  The tip of his index finger quivered as Chiun extended it toward the mess on the table. "If this is what these talkers consume, then they are either dead or deranged."

  "Actually a little of both," Remo admitted, with a shrug. "I'll get the plates." He began rooting through the cupboards for their place settings.

  "This reeks of the pummeled-tomato concoction the Romans once brewed to make food that is already unpalatable even less so."

  "Them's good eatin's," Remo agreed. He placed their plates carefully on the taboret and scooped out a healthy portion from the large pile. He dropped the goo into the center of each stoneware dish.

  Chiun raised a curious eyebrow and sank to the floor in a kneeling position across from Remo. He didn't speak another word.

  Ordinarily Remo didn't use a fork, but he had retrieved one from a drawer near the sink. He scooped up a large forkful of the tomato-rice glop. He raised it to his lips.

  Chiun watched, his face etched in stone.

  Remo brought the fork to his lips. He opened his mouth. He paused, waiting for Chiun to speak.

  As placid as a spring leaf on an early-morning pond, the Master of Sinanju regarded his pupil.

  Inwardly Remo frowned. He moved the fork

  closer, nearly in his mouth.

  All at once, he caught a green blur of Chiun's kimono sleeve and felt the pressure of four bony fingers against his forearm. Quick as a flash, the forkful of rice was in his mouth.

  Remo gagged at the taste. His throat clenched re-flexively, and he sprang from the floor, running to the sink. He spit out every repellent morsel, then rinsed his mouth under the running faucet and picked grains of slimy rice from around his teeth with the tip of his tongue. "Dammit, Chiun, that wasn't funny."

  Chiun, looking as innocent as a newborn child, watched Remo as he continued to spit bits of food into the sink. "It was my impression that a moment ago it was the pinnacle of hilarity."

  "C'mon, Chiun, it was just a joke."

  "You would like the Borgias, Remo. lliey, too, found humor in poisons." Chiun rose. "And if we have dispensed with this evening's comedy, I believe it is your turn to make dinner."

  "Okay, I'll order out," Remo said glumly. His cheery mood had all but evaporated.

  "That is of no concern to me," Chiun declared, breezing from the room.

  "White or brown?" Remo called after him.

  Chiun's squeaky voice floated back from the hallway. "Brown rice. And carp."

  "We had carp last night," Remo countered.

  "How about duck?"

  "Carp," Chiun repeated. "And if the offensive odor from that offal on the table still clings to your garments when my meal arrives, you may eat out by the garbage pail." And to punctuate the ultimatum, a distant door slammed shut.

  An hour later, showered and fed, Remo sat back with Chiun to watch the evening news.

  Though as a rule the Master of Sinanju didn't enjoy watching the nightly news, he did so on occasion to monitor—as he put it—the "daily degeneration of so-called Western society." There was a time in his life when an evening wouldn't pass without Chiun seated squarely in front of the broadcast image of news anchor Bev Woo, for whom the Master of Sinanju had developed a particular fondness. He had cooled to her of late, and those moments when he stumbled upon the anchorwoman he became almost plaintive. Woo was off tonight, and there was a sub-stitute anchorman in her chair, a man with a consol-ing baritone and all the range of expression of a Ken doll. "No one is claiming responsibility for the gruesome death of Dominic 'Grips' Scubisci, but the firefight that took the lives of two of Anselmo Scubisci's right-hand men was clearly the work of a rival organized-crime faction. Most likely, insiders say, the Patriconne Syndicate. No word from Don Anselmo on the death of his brother, but we have learned that the Manhattan godfather is holding Bernardo Patriconne personally responsible for the brutal murder."

  Chiun listened to the report from a lotus position in the center of the living room. He tipped his birdlike head pensively. "First they say there is no news, and then they report the no news. If no one is speaking, then to whom are these idiots talking?"

  "To each other mostly," said Remo from his spot on the room's only chair. He had eschewed the floor tonight. "They make up the news and usually attribute it to some unnamed source. It's some sort of First Amendment dodge. I guess it protects them from lawsuits or something."

  "Incredible," Chiun said, shaking his hairless head in disgust. 44I did not hear your name mentioned once in the report. Is there not one of these numbered amendments that requires these cretins to speak the truth?"

  "If there was, it'd put most of these guys out of business," Remo said.

  Chiun listened for another minute with growing anger while a flawless Sinanju assassination was credited to a group of rank amateurs with guns. At last his patience was exhausted.

  "I will have no more of it," he announced.

  The Master of Sinanju rose like a puff of angry green steam and crossed over to the television. He was about to slap the Off button with a furious palm when Remo suddenly sat up at attention.

  "Hold it, Chiun," he said, raising an impatient hand.

  The news anchor had segued into the next story.

  Remo saw the image of a crowded bank interior, taken from above, as if from stationary security cameras.

  Chiun looked at the screen and then back to Remo.

  "Have you developed an even greater taste for inanity?" he asked blandly.

  Remo was sitting forward in his chair, his brow furrowed in concern. "That's Smitty," Remo said, pointing to the screen.

  At the back of the still image, through the stationary bank crowd, the profile of Dr. Harold W. Smith could be clearly discerned. He was standing before a desk at which a man was squatting inexplicably over a chair.

  "No, you are not watching still images," the anchorman said with cloying playfulness. His producer had told the anchorman to use a light touch with the viewers during the next fluff piece. He managed to be both condescending and overbearing at the same time. "This was the scene at the Butler Bank of New York today as over one hundred patrons and startled bank employees had their assets, quite literally, frozen."

  The camera began panning. Remo was surprised to see that it wasn't a stationary picture, frozen on a single image. Instead, it was the scene below that seemed locked in space. The camera stopped, completing its programmed arc, but Remo could still make out the pinched features of the CURE director.

  Even with the imperfect clarity of the television screen—which was limited by the number of pix-els—Remo's sharp eyes spotted that of all the people, Smith alone wasn't completely immobile.

  Though it wasn't enough to attract attention. A second later, a few normally moving figures came into camera range.

  The anchor continued. "A daring daylight robbery turned into a payday to those lucky enough to be caught in the cross hairs of a band of modern-day Robin Hoods. No, these robbers didn't steal from the rich and give to the poor. They stole from themselves. Network correspondent Gallic Uckbridge in New York has more."

  The reporter on the scene described the Dynamic Interface System as the screen showed the robbers stuffing cash into people's pockets.

  Videotaped footage followed, featuring an im-promptu interview held on the sidewalk in front of the bank with PlattDeutsche America vice president for research and development, Lothar Holz.

  Holz claimed that the interactive device would revolutionize home-entertainment systems, as well as increase automobile safety, eliminate the need for computer keyboards and physically connect the home of the future to the rest of the palpable world.

  With DIS technology, he said, eventually a surgeon would be able to operate from halfway around the globe.

  In th
e wrap-up, the reporter disclosed how the press corps had been kept at bay on the sidewalk while the experiment in the bank was going on. This was done, the reporter said, with the aid of the Dynamic Interface System. It was an application of the device, he noted wryly, that the White House was certainly already looking into.

  When the story had finished and Remo seemed satisfied, Chiun slapped his hand against the small round button at the base of the console. The screen winked out.

  "That's the business Smith was on today," Remo mused.

  "I do not know how you even recognized him. In that crowd, he was as a single grain of sand on a beach. A white beach."

  With a movement that was a flawless mixture of economy and delicacy, Chiun sank back to his wo-ven-reed mat in the center of the floor.

  The skirts of his emerald green kimono slowly settled around his bony knees like air escaping from a gently settling parachute.

  "The way he is about security," Remo grunted,

  "I'm surprised he's not going nuts."

  "Smith is already insane, Remo. The sky is seen in many shades of blue, but it is never striped."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It means that Smith is a lunatic, Smith was a lunatic and Smith will always be a lunatic. If there is a day he is more lunatic than another, it is only a matter of degree."

  "Just remember he's the lunatic who keeps us in rice and skittles."

  "And if his madness ever tells him to stop, the House of Sinanju will be better served to find an emperor who is not deranged. Leave me now, Remo." And with that, Chiun closed his eyes in meditation.

  Remo got up slowly from his seat. The frail old Asian sat in the center of his tatami mat—seemingly as motionless as the people in the Butler Bank. Remo knew that Chiun was breathing rhythmically, a Sinanju technique that aligned him with the natural forces of the universe.

  Walking quietly toward the door, Remo pondered the newscast.

  He knew that Smith valued the secrecy of CURE

  over everything else. Nothing, except perhaps America itself, was more sacred to him than avoiding exposure. Even though it was a minor crowd scene and no one would possibly have picked him out, Remo couldn't help but think of his boss and what kind of reaction he'd have when he found out. If his past was any indication, a guest spot on the national news would probably make him lose his mind.

  5

  "See if it'll fire on 0010010. Okay, perfect. Now patch that across on LISP. There, that's it."

  Dr. Curt Newton was like a gleeful child turning pages in a favorite book. And with every turned page, he came closer to unlocking the secrets of the gray old man in the bank. For motivation, as well as to increase the sense of mystery among his assistants, he had printed several copies of the man's face and had taped them up around the lab. A picture of the man with the features of a squeezed lemon stared vacantly from above the computer screen at which Newton now worked.

  Lothar Holz looked at the image of the bland old man with as little interest as was humanly possible for him to generate. This was a calculated indifference that he used in all sorts of business and social situations to show that he, the great Lothar Holz, was above being interested in anything. And if Lothar Holz wasn't interested in something, then it wasn't worthy of interest.

  He found, in short order, that it was he in whom the scientists in this large room weren't interested.

  Dr. Curt Newton, their leader, was shouting something at a group of them about proper algorithmic treatment on the neural net. It sounded like just another load of gibberish. This was common to Holz.

  Since he had stolen Newton away from MIT a few years earlier to spearhead the interface project, he had been subjected to the worst kind of scientific lingo.

  He had a nagging suspicion that these scientific types were just blowing smoke with a bunch of trumped-up terms. In fact, when this jargon seemed to have gotten completely out of hand early on, Holz decided to put Dr. Newton on the spot. The scientist wanted to conduct something called PET research as an adjunct to his interface study. Holz had demanded to know what the equipment was for.

  "It's used for diagnostic imaging," Newton had explained.

  Lothar Holz had nodded as if he understood.

  "PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography,"

  Newton had said patiently. "It gives us the chemical physiology, as well as structure of the brain." He could see that he wasn't getting through to Holz. He spoke very slowly. "A patient is injected with a glu-coselike substance which emits positrons. The positrons then collide with electrons to form photons. We can then detect and record the speed and path of the photons through the brain."

  Completely lost, Holz had asked gruffly, "Is it necessary for your research?"

  "Crucial."

  Newton had the PET imaging scanner the next morning.

  Holz felt the same way now as he had then. Everyone in the interface R&D complex in Edison, New Jersey, was running around as if preparing for a cor-onation. And they were acting as if the nondescript old man whose brain patterns they had downloaded were their new king.

  Holz tugged the picture down from above Dr.

  Newton's screen.

  The image was in color, but Holz would have argued that fact with anyone. The old man still looked as if he were in black-and-white.

  Or shades of gray, anyway.

  "What's so special about him?" he inquired blandly.

  The technician who was monitoring the rate the information was flowing into the smaller computers had just gone to the back of the room to check the mainframe.

  "Only the culmination of years of research,"

  Newton said. He snatched the picture away and replaced it above his screen.

  Feigning boredom with the entire procedure, Holz asked, "Is he really worth all this effort?"

  Curt Newton actually stopped typing and stared at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding?" he asked, shocked. "This guy is like nothing I've ever seen.

  His mind is so orderly, if we can figure out how it works, we could work backward from him. His brain would be a flawless pattern for reverse interface engineering. Years of work could literally take only weeks."

  Holz laughed derisively. "I doubt that."

  "Lothar," Curt Newton said icily, 44if you were impressed by the demonstration at the bank this morning, I can assure you that you will be stunned by what we cart do with what we learn from this man."

  Holz paused to consider. The truth was, he had been impressed by the demonstration. PlattDeutsche America had become complacent in the marketplace of late and had accepted the downsizing of the military without much of a battle. Though he hadn't exactly lied at the press conference when he listed all of the peaceful applications of the interface technology, the truth was, he was hoping to make the United States government realize what it was missing out on if it didn't sign on with PlattDeutsche. A big, fat government contract would help finance further development.

  It had been a gamble. The board hadn't been pleased with the unauthorized test at the bank and the president of the company was screaming for his head. Holz had found that out through his own Private channels. He smiled inwardly. If the president ever found out who really ran the company, he'd probably have a stroke. Holz was being called before the board for a meeting that afternoon. Maybe he'd drop the big secret on them then. He grinned at the thought.

  "Have you learned anything about the old man so far?" he asked Newton.

  The scientist continued typing at his workstation as he spoke. Monotonous sequences of zeros and ones flew by at breathtaking speed. "We know his name is Smith."

  "How did you find that out?"

  "We've programmed the computers here to recognize patterns of a certain type. Other information is more difficult to decipher, but the clearest patterns always start with numbers, which really govern people's lives in a lot of ways. In a literal sense—telephone, social security, addresses, birth dates. But also in a more esoteric sense. The basic alp
habet can be seen in numerical terms. There's the finite number twenty-six, which in combination yields a virtually infinite number of possibilities. Infinite in terms of our capabilities, anyway," he added. "Computers read things in numbers. My theory is that the human brain does, too. I link up numerical sequences. It's that simple."

  "And that told you his name was Smith?" Holz still sounded skeptical.

  "Absolutely."

  "So what's his first name?"

  Newton was vague. "I'm not quite sure. In test subjects, that has generally been one of the easiest things to determine, the human ego being what it is.

  But this man has virtually no ego whatsoever. It seems that even in his own thoughts he hardly every refers to himself by his first name. And without many like references, it's going to be a while before we discern a pattern that our name file recognizes."

  "So you've stalled." Holz seemed pleased that the brilliant Dr. Newton had stumbled.

  "Only as far as that's concerned," Newton admitted. "But we've learned other stuff that tells us more about him."

  "Like what?"

  "Well, for starters, he's from New England originally. Right now I'm willing to bet Vermont. He had a strict upbringing. He lives somewhere in south-eastern New York. And he's into computers...

  perhaps much more than he imagines."

  Newton pushed against his desk. His chair rolled on its casters to a console several feet behind him, where two lab computer programmers were working on the background information on the test subject.

  "Stern and Geist have found a few interesting items," he said as he bumped to a stop against the new workstation.

  The two men looked up at Holz, who had followed Newton over. "There's a lot of morbid stuff in here, Lothar," the first technician, Ron Stern, said. "A lot of stuff about death, dying. It's a recurring pattern.

  Almost an obsession."

  "But he's pretty old, so that probably makes sense," Geist, the youngest of the programmers, suggested.

  "What's that?" Holz asked, pointing at the screen.

  Stern shook his head. "It's a neural symbol that we can best match up to mean destroyer. We're finding it a lot."