Unpopular Science

The teenage kid leaned back in his chair and reached for one of the many computer terminals scattered around their small work area. He tapped a few keys and grinned broadly.

“’Bye-bye, dick,” the kid said. “I just wish I could see it go down.”

Cote looked wildly around as the ballroom filled with the whirs and buzzing sounds of more automatons coming to life.

“What’s happening?” Cote shouted.

“Remo,” Chiun asked, “did you accidentally lean on any buttons?”

“No way, uh-uh.”

“That son of a bitch!” Cote exclaimed.

Remo and Chiun put themselves between the advancing mechanicals. The attack was spearheaded by a rotor-driven airborne device that was as big as a garbage can, and it swept down on Remo, firing high-velocity rounds from an air gun. Remo dodged the rounds and tried to draw its attention away from Cote, but the machine had a one-track mind. It ignored Remo, gunning for the arms merchant, until Remo ran up underneath it, jumped twice his own height and snatched it by the bottom-mounted gun barrel. It came down with him, still firing, rotors buzzing to their maximum speed in a bid for freedom, but Remo used it to sweep at the wave of rolling, plodding robots that came after it.

There was a series of rolling, rodentlike robots that turned to flee but were chopped up by the spinning rotors, then the tread-mounted doglike robot was smashed and it collapsed on its side, treads spinning uselessly.

Remo dropped the ruined helicopter and simply began disabling machinery by hand. First he plucked a quartet of V-wing gliders out of fire air as they attempted to impale him on their needlelike noses, which dripped poison. Remo reached around the needles just as each wing was about to drive into him, crushing the wings and dropping them on the floor one after another. The rest of the automatons were rolling or walking, and they surrendered their vital parts without much more effort. Chiun appeared with an armful of mechanical heads. Behind him a few of his victims still rolled or stomped in circles.

“Starting a collection?” Remo asked.

“I do not understand this,” Chiun said, peering at one of the apple-size robot skulls.

“What’s to understand?”

Chiun pressed his finger into the dull black metal. “Iron?”

“So?”

“Hand forged. There are the marks of a blacksmith’s hammer. It is very old.”

“Look who’s talking. So what?”

“Must you always act like an idiot? You are no better than the imbecile who thinks he is a powerful villain from a Hollywood film!”

Cote, curled on the floor in his own filth, began sobbing quietly.

“Come on, Chiun, that’s not true. I do not walk around pretending to be stupid.”

“You cannot possibly be that genuinely stupid.”

“Listen, just because I’m not following your brilliant deductions, it doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. You are obviously a much better detective than I am. We’re all very impressed by your powers of observation, Matlock, now cut the crap and tell me what’s so effing important about an old robot.”

Chiun put the iron robot head into his sleeves with his hands and said nothing.

“Wait a second. Why’s there a robot with a head made by a blacksmith?” Remo asked. “Even I know they didn’t have robots back in the horse-and-buggy days. Did they?”

Chiun might as well have been a stuffed display for all the reaction he offered.

“Fine. Hey, you, Cote. Why do you have robots with forged-iron heads.”

“They were made that way,” Cote said through sobs. “They’re antiques. That one was from 1908.”

Remo sighed. “You know what, I don’t even want you to explain that to me.” He grabbed the Spanish crime boss by his amazingly unsoiled hair and lifted him to his feet.

“Come on. I know a couple of nerds who’ll appreciate it more than I do anyway.”

“Whoa!” the kid said, cycling through the windows. “Every dang one of them knocked out of commission!”

“I am aware of that, Jack,” Fastbinder said unhappily.

“And they did it in like a minute!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Pops, we can’t let them take away Cote. He’ll blab. We have to hit them with the rest of Cote’s munitions.”

Fastbinder sighed. “I don’t think it will do any good, but it can’t hurt. Cote’s already paid for them.” He grimaced. “Power them up.”

“Yeah, Pops!” Jack leaned back in his chair and poked at another keyboard. The system came to life, opened a connection that circled the globe from New Mexico to the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and began communications with a master override system that Fastbinder and his son always built into every device they sold.

Just so, when they wanted to, they could make use of their precious creations and restorations.

“Charging up,” Jack exclaimed.

“Let’s hope they stay around long enough,” Fastbinder muttered.

Remo’s mind and body seemed to become ghostly, his energy gushing out of him, his vision collapsing. Cote sprawled on the floor where Remo had dropped him.

“It’s come back, Little Father!” he gasped.