Lords of the Earth td-61 Read online

  "Why don't we just put our own scientists on the damned thing and forget the IHAEO?" the President asked.

  "They have most of the good entomologists," Smith said.

  The President thought for a moment while Smith mutilated another rosebush. Then the President slowly nodded.

  "Don't let me down," he said. His voice was low and he moved off along the fence as if out for an afternoon stroll. Three hours later, the new assistant gardener was gone for good.

  Smith remembered the afternoon. He felt an obligation to a man who had done the right thing. It would work. More and more through the years, he had understood Remo less and less and he had never understood Chiun. But this was the sort of thing they were good at, and now Remo had reported that things were under control. Dr. Ravits was safe.

  And to make matters better in the St. Martin sun, he had solved the computer problems forever. He felt good. He rubbed in the suntan cream to protect his pale skin from the sun's intense heat. He could even believe now that he was lucky. He had never believed in luck before, but now he had to say, after so many years of grinding calculation, that yes, he was quite lucky.

  Suddenly, someone was tapping him on the shoulder and Smith looked up to see the black bellbottoms of a gendarme. The policeman wore a pistol in a black holster. His blue shirt bore the insignia of the French national police.

  "Are you Harold W. Smith?" he asked with a thick accent.

  "Yes," said Smith.

  "Would you come with me, sir?" the gendarme said. The tone of his voice told Smith nothing but Smith knew that the gendarmes were quite polite because of the island's tourist business. They would rarely ticket a car no matter how it was parked, and they had their own special sort of justice.

  Recently, when a tourist's wife had been raped, they brought the suspect to the woman's husband, an American policeman, and left them alone for five minutes. They then deported what remained of the suspect to another island. There was no long, drawnout trial.

  Many things were done like that, and that gave CURE exactly what it needed most: a place without a very inquisitive local police force. Justice and law enforcement were rather basic in St. Martin and, since computers never threatened anyone, the organization could be sure to be left alone on a quiet island in a rolling sea.

  "May I ask why I must go with you?" Smith said.

  "You must accompany me to Marigot," the gendarme said.

  Smith reasoned he was being taken to police headquarters since Marigot was the capital of the French half of the island. "May I put on something more than a bathing suit?"

  "But of course," said the gendarme.

  Ordinarily Smith might have been concerned at this point, but with the computers now safe from any invasions, he actually whistled as he went into the apartment facing the beach. He rented the apartment from the man who supplied the entire island with gasoline, a franchise the man's family had owned for several generations.

  Smith wriggled out of his bathing suit while the policeman waited politely outside the apartment. He took a short shower to get rid of the sand, and then put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and sandals. He also took the key to the solution of all the organization's computer programs.

  It was the size of an attache case and it held more memory capability than all the computers the Strategic Air Command had secreted in the Rocky Mountains. The truth was that CURE no longer needed its offices at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, just as it no longer needed the offices which were carved out of the coral hills behind the salt flats in Grand Case. All it needed was the briefcase in Smith's hand. For what Smith had finally done was to find one genius who had discovered a source of memory almost as infinite as space.

  It went beyond bubble technology. It used the cosmic relationships between stars. The very energy that would attract light now stored the information from throughout the world in a single access disk.

  "You see," the computer genius had said, "you don't need to store memory, you only need to access it, to reach it. Well, that means you can use anything to store it if you want, even light refraction. Do you understand?"

  "Frankly, no," Smith had said.

  "You don't have to. It works," Barry Schweid had said. And it did.

  Schweid was twenty-five, lived at home with his mother, and spent eighteen hours a day over a small personal computer which he said he had "juiced up." He didn't really care that much after salary. His mother did, however, and she also worried about him meeting nice girls, eating properly and getting sun. She wouldn't let Barry out of the house unless nice Mr. Smith, his new employer, promised he would get at least two hours of fresh air a day and that Barry would eat at least one good healthy meal a day.

  Those promises given, Schweid had come to work for Smith, who sent him to St. Martin, where CURE kept up a big bank of computers that duplicated all the information in the computers at CURE's main headquarters in Folcroft Sanitarium.

  "I want you to make our computer files entry-proof," Smith had said.

  And Schweid had.

  Basically what he had done was to take all CURE's information and devise a new way to make it available through the equipment that fit into the attache case.

  "How does that help?" Smith had asked. "Now I've got three sets of files that can be entered instead of two."

  "No," Schweid had said. "You don't understand."

  "No, I don't."

  "Here it is. What this allows us to do is to put a trap net on the other computers, the ones at Folcroft and here."

  "What will that do?"

  "It will allow us to jigger those other computers so that if anybody breaks into them, in any way, the computers will simply erase themselves. Totally."

  "Everything will be gone?"

  "Right. Before anybody can steal it. And because you've got the master file in that attache case, you can always refill the main computers at some later date if you want."

  The only problem was getting access through the attache-case computer. Schweid was still needed for that because of its intricacy, but he had promised Smith that he would soon deliver a modified access system which would allow Smith to get into the files himself without Schweid's help.

  This had brought a rare, unaccustomed smile to Smith's face. The world was working well. He was getting rest in St. Martin, the world's problems seemed to be under control, and he even surprised his own lemony critical nature by not worrying about why the gendarme had come to pick him up.

  He picked up the attache case that he had purposely made to look old and beat up, something that might be carrying dirty laundry rather than access to the world's greatest collection of evil secrets.

  Harold W. Smith's nature was that he could wear checkered Bermuda shorts and a yellow T-shirt and look perfectly natural carrying an attache case. He always looked as if he should have some sort of briefcase, even when he slept.

  Downstairs, the small Citroen police car sat in the dusty alley between the white beachfront homes. The gendarme opened the door for Smith. Unlike American police cars, there was no protective screen between driver and passengers. The only thing that made this bouncy little Citroen a police car was a reflective light on top and a French-national-police label on the side, the symbol of a torch.

  As they pulled out into the streets of Grand Case, so narrow that one car had to pull over onto the curb whenever a vehicle came in the opposite direction, the gendarme asked very casually the one question that could send Smith into shock.

  "Pardon, sir. Do you know a Barry Schweid?"

  "Is he all right?" Smith asked.

  "Somewhat," the gendarme said.

  "What happened?"

  "He gave us your name."

  "Yes, I know him. I employ him. I have an import-export business."

  "Do you know that he is a dangerous man?"

  "Barry?" asked Smith. The boy was as mild as milk. In fact, the only thing a really thorough investigation of Barry's past had revealed was a kindergarten incident where
he wet his pants. The boy filed his income taxes on time, once reporting a twenty-dollar bill he had found on the street. He had had five dates in all his life, and on one of those, when the girl had gone into the bedroom to get into something comfortable, Barry had fled, thinking it was a reflection on him and the entire evening. If she were comfortable with him, he reasoned, she ought to have been comfortable in her clothing.

  Barry Schweid had been kissed on his twenty-second birthday when friction stopped the spinning motion of a bottle at a party his mother gave for him.

  Barry had been seeing a therapist for three years because of his fear of raising his voice. In fact, he had once got to Curacao because he had been afraid to tell the stewardess that he had blundered onto the wrong plane.

  "What on earth has he done?" Smith asked.

  "He has violently assaulted a market woman at the docks in Marigot."

  "That sounds impossible."

  "While she was coming to the aid of a gendarme." At Rue Charles de Gaulle in the steaming small port city that was the capital of the island's French side, Harold W. Smith spoke to the prefect of the island police.

  He assured the prefect that he knew the young man, knew his background intimately, knew the family. It did not hurt that Smith spoke French fluently. In World War II, in the old OSS, he had parachuted into France. While by nature, he never discussed such things, in this case he allowed it to get into the conversation. He also shrewdly let the prefect know that he was saved by the underground and that if it had not been for the French, Smith would have been a dead man.

  To hear Smith talk, one would have believed that the French had liberated America during the war and not vice versa. The prefect saw before him that rare American who was a gentleman. He allowed as how the law did not have to be as formidable in the Caribbean as it was in Paris.

  Smith offered amends to both the gendarme and the market woman, though he was mystified as to how Barry Schweid could have started a commotion. He offered a thousand francs to the woman and two thousand American dollars to the officer. "For their trouble," he said.

  The prefect knowingly put a palm on the back of Smith's hand.

  "One thousand American dollars is enough of a salve for his dignity, monsieur," he said with a wink. And thus justice was done on Rue Charles de Gaulle between two old allies, who embraced warmly. With the money paid, Smith got Barry released. Smith could overhear men in the police headquarters commenting on how they were bringing out "the monster" and everyone should be wary. Sidearms silently came out of holsters. One burly officer gripped a lead-weighted stick.

  In the main police room, between two large gendarmes, waddled a frightened, very pale and somewhat pudgy young man whose hair looked as if it hadn't seen a comb since the crib.

  Barry still wore a flannel shirt and long pants and was sweating profusely. He had been afraid to go outside in a new country and so had stayed in the air-conditioned apartment, working. Smith had vainly tried to get him outside, saying he had promised Barry's mother the boy would get some sun.

  "I will. A little bit later," Barry had said. "But not now." Smith did, however, get Barry to bathe and brush his teeth each day. And he did promise to comb his hair, but somehow his work always seemed more important than the seven seconds hair-combing would take.

  Now he stood, five-feet five, semishaven, very meek and quite frightened, between two large French policemen.

  "Hello, Barry," said Smith.

  "Hello, Harold," said Barry softly.

  "Are you all right, Barry?"

  "No, Harold."

  "What's wrong, Barry?"

  Barry Schweid extended a finger and motioned Smith to come closer.

  "You want to whisper it, Barry?"

  "Yes, Harold."

  Smith went over to the young man and asked that the guards move away a bit, then bent down to hear the complaint.

  "I see, yes," said Smith. "Who has it?"

  "I think him, Harold," said Barry. He nodded to a gendarme behind a large flat desk with the picture of the French premier behind it.

  "Just a minute," said Smith and went over to the gendarme, who looked at him suspiciously.

  Smith whispered in French.

  "Did you take away a piece of soft blue cloth when you arrested Mr. Schweid?"

  The gendarme said that he didn't quite remember, just as the prefect entered to make sure his compatriot, Harold W. Smith of the Second World War, was properly taken care of.

  "You want a piece of cloth? Garbage?" asked the prefect.

  As soon as he heard the word "garbage," the gendarme at the desk remembered. Schweid had been clinging to a piece of blue cloth when he was arrested and they threw it away.

  "Could you get it again?" asked Smith in French.

  "It's in the garbage," said the gendarme.

  "Shh, not so loud," said Smith.

  "What are you all whispering about?" screamed Barry, and three gendarmes drew pistols and aimed them at Barry's chest. Barry collapsed in the corner, covering his head with his arms and screaming.

  "Get the cloth, damn it," snapped Smith.

  "Go, go," ordered the prefect.

  "It's all right, Barry," Smith said. "They're getting it. They're getting it."

  But Barry only screamed and kicked his legs uselessly in the air. The computer genius was having a tantrum.

  Guns returned to their holsters. Gendarmes exchanged puzzled looks in the station on Rue Charles de Gaulle. The prefect assured his American ally that Schweid had been a most dangerous adversary on the docks. In fact, the market woman who was injured weighed 220 pounds and was perhaps the strongest person on the island, including the Dutch side, where they had many large, uncivilized people.

  Smith nodded. He did not know what had happened, but when they got the cloth, he would then be able to talk to Barry and find out. He assured the noble prefect that most certainly the incident would never happen again.

  "If Mr. Schweid must commit that sort of mayhem," whispered the prefect, "and we do know a man's nature is his nature after all, there are places for it. There is, after all, the Dutch side of the island. You understand."

  Smith nodded but assured the prefect that such violence was not normally in the young man's character. A gendarme came into the station carrying the blue piece of cloth at arm's length and holding his nose. It smelled of fish and rotted fruit and coffee grounds. It had been thrown into the garbage disposal.

  "That's it. Mine," yelled Barry.

  "It's all right, Barry. We're bringing it to you."

  "Thank you, Harold," said Barry, sobbing and gratefully clutching the dirty cloth to his cheek. Barry Schweid, computer genius of the organization's vast secret network and newly named "Monster of Marigot," cried meekly and sucked his thumb.

  The prefect gave them a driver to return them north to the village of Grand Case. Instead of going to their apartment, Smith had the driver leave them off at what appeared to be the gravel works on a road to a cul-de-sac. Inside the simple office of the gravel works, behind the mosquito-infested salt flats, Smith led Barry to a rear office which secretly opened up into a large cave that housed the storage and retrieval area of CURE's computer network.

  It was here that Schweid had devised the portable system that Smith now carried. He also had figured out a way not only to make Smith's files entry-proof, but to find out the identity of anyone who accidentally came close to tapping into the network. Smith, who was not a neophyte to technology himself, never could figure out how.

  When the doors behind them were closed, sealed beyond penetration by interlocking steel plates, Smith asked the simple question:

  "What happened in Marigot?"

  "It's all your fault," Barry Schweid said. He was rubbing his ear with a corner of the blanket.

  "My fault?" Smith asked. "How?"

  "I don't want to tell you."

  "Barry, listen. You know we do a lot of work we don't want others to know about. We can't have attention called to o
urselves or people will get curious."

  "Secret work?" Barry said.

  "Yes," Smith said, and Barry nodded. He brushed an old piece of fish from his blanket and stuffed it into his rear pocket.

  "Well, all right," he said. "It's these files." He pointed to the large banks of computers that circled the walls of the cave.

  "What about them?"

  "You entered some old stuff and put your initials on the entries, and I was scanning the files, doing a ... well, never mind, it was complicated, but this file popped out. And it had your observations on it. You were saying you talked to someone you had recruited and asked what he was doing. And he was saying that he wasn't doing anything except learning how to breathe and the whole thing was stupid and he was going to quit on you anyhow."

  Instantly Smith knew what Barry Schweid had discovered. They were Smith's early observations on Remo's training, his very earliest training when Smith had brought in Chiun to try to create a single enforcement arm, one man to do the work that really should have been done by thousands.

  Schweid was still talking. "It didn't make sense, of course, if you looked at it for just what people were saying. But it kept popping out because it kept integrating itself into the basic cosmic formulas for power. You understand mass and energy and the speed of light, don't you?"

  "As well as most laymen, I guess," said Smith.

  "Well, just imagine light curving and you have the whole thing," said Schweid.

  Smith cleared his throat. It was beyond anything he could understand.

  Barry said, "In the light of cosmic power, the same kind we're using to store all your files now, you can understand what the breathing means. It means synchronizing yourself with these rhythms. Therefore, you're really reflecting the curving of light in its own power. In theory."

  "And in practice?" Smith asked.

  "Well, I tried it," said Barry, "and suddenly I had all sorts of confidence and I went outside and practically ran all the way to Marigot which has got to be five or six miles and then at the market someone pushed me and I just sort of pushed back."