Unpopular Science

Sarah Slate hated the tree but clung to it year after year. After all, the Slate family was embodied in the tree. Now that the Slate family was virtually gone, she, Sarah, was the last of the green leaves. This was an idiotic and morbid outlook, she knew, but she couldn’t get it out of her head, so she stayed in the house, although it was far too dark and huge for a bright young woman. And whenever the brisk breezes that gusted over the hills of Providence, Rhode Island, were not too bitter, she would take her breakfast on the small brick patio under the stark limbs of the great oak tree that she hated.

“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed.

Mrs. Sanderson came out of the kitchen entrance with her hands covered in soapsuds. “Is something wrong, Sarah?”

“No. Not really, Mrs. Sanderson. Look at this.” She thrust the newspaper at the woman, who had been cooking breakfast for the Slate family for more than forty years.

“My goodness,” she said. “Who’d have thought it That poor man.”

“Poor man?” Sarah asked. She took back the paper and reexamined it. “Oh—I had not even read that far. I just saw the part about the sighting.”

“It’s an astounding story,” Mrs. Sanderson said. “I’ll bet no one has seen Slate’s mechanical man in eighty years. It was old news when I started with the family. This poor old hermit must have gone soft in the head and forgot what year it was.”

“Then killed himself,” Sarah concluded sadly. “Out there, all alone in the desert.”

“Alone, indeed,” Mrs. Sanderson said. “You would have to be a lonely man to summon the ghost of Iron- hand for company.”

Tsking, Mrs. Sanderson returned to her kitchen and her breakfast dishes. Sarah read the story yet again, thinking that maybe she understood how lonely that poor old desert hermit must have been.

“This is where you get off, isn’t it. Junior?” Remo asked as they touched down in Atlanta.

“Actually, I’m tagging along with you to Morocco.”

Remo smirked. “Did you know your body temperature just started going up, Junior? Your pulse increased at the same time. Also, your forehead started sweating, you started doing a Rodney Dangerfield thing with your tie, and a little neon sign began blinking on and off above your head. It says, He’s Hiding Something, and there’s a big fat arrow pointing at you.”

Mark Howard tried to appear nonplussed but realized that he did so by darting his eyes from side to side.

He tried not saying anything and found himself facing down a slightly irritated, highly smug Remo Williams.

He wondered if Sinanju training included some sort of ability to stimulate a sense of extreme discomfort in selected victims or if that was Remo’s special talent.

“Long flight to Morocco?” Remo asked.

Mark nodded. “Hours. Point taken.”

“So? Fess up.”

“I’m supposed to accompany you and help keep the mission on track.”

“You’re my field handler now?”

“No, not—”

“Chaperone, then?”

“Well—”

“Whatever. I’ve got the picture.” Remo settled in his seat.

Mark and Remo had rarely seen eye to eye, but the relationship had improved over the first antagonistic couple of years Mark served with CURE. Remo had grudgingly accepted Mark as a valuable addition to the team, which meant he treated him with about the same level of disrespect as Dr. Smith. Mark knew Remo’s behavior—thought he did, anyway. He didn’t understand what was happening right now.

“You’re not going to kick me off the plane?”

Remo looked at him. “You want me to?”

“No. I thought you would.”

Remo shook his head.

Mark Howard hated being unsure of what was going on, especially with the Masters of Sinanju. They were, after all, the most awesome, deadly and powerful human beings on the planet. Even if they were on Mark’s team, he sometimes felt in deadly peril just being in the same room.

He wondered if he would ever figure Remo Williams out.

“Your forehead gonna sweat like that all the way across the Atlantic?” Remo asked.

The jet was a private transcontinental aircraft designed to get VIPs from one continent to another continent as soon as possible, in style. The pilot taxied quickly to a terminal where a bored-looking young man in ear protectors drove a set of motorized stairs to meet them. The young man chomped his gum and palmed the steering wheel of the stairs, going too fast and bumping into the aircraft a little too hard and too far to the right. When the flight attendant opened the door, the steps weren’t aligned with the opening.

She waved at the operator. The young man purposely looked in the opposite direction.

“Fix the stairs!” she shouted down.

The operator chomped his gum and watched a tiny corporate jet take off. The flight attendant shrugged and went back to doing whatever she did in the galley for hours at a time.

A small cart appeared from inside the private terminal and rolled across the tarmac, the driver flinching as if he expected to be slapped every time he hit an imperfection in the pavement.