Unpopular Science

Jenkins gasped. There was Franco, all right, with one arm sunk into his mouth up to the elbow, the other squashed and bloody and somehow adhered to his weapon. The man was staggering to the road that ran in front of the house, maybe looking for a passing ambulance. He dropped to the grass, never to rise again.

“Suh!” Jenkins said, and indicated another monitor. One of the guards in the video feed lay on his back, his severed head wobbling nearby.

“The front door must have been them, suh. The killers.”

“All my goons are dead? Every bleeding man jack of them?”

“I suggest you power up the defenses, suh.”

Allessandro Cote stood up straight, looked down his nose at his butler and tightened his lips. “Quite right, Jenkins,” he said, fully in control once more. “These—” he waved at the screens “—were just extras, anyway.”

“Of course, suh.”

The picture of British reserve, Allessandro Cote strolled to the next oversize control panel. There were three chunks of jagged, unpolished quartz crystal set into the panel, each one the size of a teacup. Cote placed his hand against a hard, cool crystal—the purplish one on the end.

The door on the far end of the ballroom burst open.

“It’s stronger, Little Father,” Remo said.

“I feel it in my bones,” Chiun said.

They had moved fast through the endless, opulent rooms of the old section of the ancient mansion, but the strange sensation was intensified now. Remo felt his limbs becoming heavier.

“How far?” Remo asked, realizing his sense of direction was askew.

Chiun yanked open a door that was hand carved, the figurines around the door latch smoothed by centuries of contact with human fingers. “Beyond the next door,” Chiun stated.

Remo wondered how Chiun could sound so sure of himself when Remo’s own disorientation was escalating and this room looked just like all the others, musty and packed with a lot of well-polished antique furniture.

“How many freaking parlors do you freaking need?” Remo demanded.

“This is it,” Chiun announced at the next set of extra-wide double doors. He looked at Remo, and Remo saw the old man thinking hard. “I shall enter alone.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You shall remain here and assess the nature of this anomaly.”

“No way in hell.”

“It is foolish for both of us to walk into danger!”

Remo cocked his head. “Right you are, and I decide who.”

“I am the Master Emeritus!” Chiun stamped one foot, but it was a gesture without vigor.

“I’m Reigning Master and what I say goes and I say I go.”

He never gave the old Korean time to reply before he bashed his shoulder into the doors. They squeaked open and the sensation increased to a shrill pitch. Remo imagined he heard some sort of supersonic sound that assaulted him, drained him of vitality, confused his thinking. It was all he could do to hold himself upright and walk with feigned energy across the huge, open room.

The ceilings were high and set with iron-filigreed frames around frosted glass, and the floor was ancient, polished wood planks. The walls were decorated with bigger-than-life-size murals of Spanish royalty, the paintings separated by red-velvet-upholstered panels.

The room was entirely empty except for flashing, multicolored banks of electronic controls and screens on the far side of the room and the pair of formally dressed men who stood watching him.

“Sorry. Didn’t know it was black tie.” Remo felt that he had to shout to be heard above the chaos that was attacking him. The pair in the money suits seemed unaffected.

“May I ask who you are and what business you have?” asked the younger man.

Remo’s confusion grew. Was he mistaken, or was the man trying to force a hackneyed British accent on top of his native Spanish accent?

“Which of you is Al Cote?”

“I am Mr. Cote. And you are?”

“Annoyed. Remo Annoyed.”

“Not as annoyed as I am, to be sure,” the younger man said. Remo realized the acoustics of the room were allowing them to speak normally despite the distance between them. He seemed to be having trouble walking at a normal pace.

“Which old movie set did you steal, anyway?” Remo asked. “Was it Logan’s Run? Now, that was a stupid-looking computer.”

Cote looked as if he was trying to stifle an outburst. “Not science fiction! Think secret agent.”

“Huh?” Now he was really confused. The movie crack had been just that—a crack, a joke. “You mean, like James Bond?”

“Exactly!” Suddenly Cote was beaming.

“You mean, you really did model your little command console after something out of a James Bond movie?”

Cote looked like an excited corgi about to go walkies. “Not just this, but all of it! Look around you!”

Remo stopped where he was in the middle of the room, hoping a pause would restore some of his waning strength. He looked around the empty old room, trying to make sense of what Cote was saying.

“What?”

“Think about it! Think about what this would look like if we were in a motion picture right now.”

Remo was trying to follow the thread. “Like, a James Bond movie?”

“Yes!” Cote was ecstatic.

“So this is like, the big set where the climax takes place?”