Unpopular Science

Jenkins soon realized that the collection was on a spree, for whatever reason. Allessandro Cote was blasted with cyanide darts from a lighter-than-air gunship even as a rolling keg of gasoline spurted a tongue of fire at his legs. A ninety-year-old mechanical cannon that looked like an end table on wheels, and was actually constructed largely of wood, belched black smoke from the deck-mounted gun. It blasted half of Cote’s abdomen away. Allessandro Cote’s corpse was then sliced to ribbons by an old-time gas-powered tree trimmer, almost eight feet long and counterbalanced on a hat stand that was itself mounted on a power mower deck.

The alligator rolled into sight, just outside the door, and Jenkins knew he was dead. Buck up, old chap, he thought, the alligator will be a quick death, clean and neat. Certainly better than the dragonflies.

Nothing could be worse than the dragonflies, right?

The bronze alligator put on a burst of speed and its head rotated sideways, then its hinged jaws snapped open, revealing a hundred and forty teeth made from stainless-steel blades salvaged from an abattoir. Very effective, indeed, Jenkins thought, as the massive jaws slammed shut on pneumatic pistons, biting his legs clean off just below the knees.

The alligator backed off. Jenkins collapsed to the ground but didn’t feel it. He saw his bloody feet still standing there, and the neatly severed calves tumbled out of the creature’s maw when it opened its jaws and spun its head in a full circle, first this way, then that. The gears clanked and rattled in its neck.

Now free of obstruction, it came at Jenkins again, closing its jaws on his torso and arm. Not very neat, Jenkins thought. There was a big mess of tom tissue when the alligator pulled back. Very messy.

Very painful, too.

But better than the dragonflies.

Chapter 14

The strange phenomenon that leeched their energy stopped. Their strength came back. Remo and Chiun felt their vigor seeping into them again, step by step, as they descended through the levels of rooms that clung to the hillside. Finally they came to an elegant sunroom that was all glass, walls and ceiling. The Mediterranean sea was golden in the lowering sun, and long shadows cooled the lawns outside.

There was no one in the sunroom.

There was no one outside.

They were halfway through the room when they felt - it again. Still stumbling with weakness, Remo felt his knees buckle almost immediately, and he grabbed for a wicker chair back to hold himself up.

He didn’t have the strength to be as angry as he wanted to be.

“Shush,” gasped Chiun, giving him a warning look, adding in Korean, “Act natural.”

“There are more of them coming, Chiun,” Remo insisted.

“Then this phenomenon will cease and we will deal with whatever weapon materializes,” Chiun said. “Meanwhile, we are being watched.”

Remo tried hard to stand up straight, as if the reason he had stopped was simply to watch for whatever danger would present itself. What Chiun called a phenomenon had been slightly different with each experience. Now it was as if there were many, many small sources, maybe hundreds, and they came from the very earth outside the sunroom.

Then it stopped.

Once again Remo felt the intense relief as the energy began to elevate rapidly into his body, but he wasn’t fooled this time. He wasn’t free of it. Not yet.

“Must we stand here and await an attack?” Chiun complained in English, obviously wanting their voyeurs to hear.

“Nice place for it,” Remo said. His recuperation was slower than it had been previously. Would he get his strength back before the attack came? Would he get it back ever?

If they ran for it now, weakened and exhausted, they wouldn’t get far.

A tiny shadow passed over the window. A pair of dragonflies darted about one another just outside the glass.

Another pair.

Then the dragonflies began billowing out of the bushes, forming a storm cloud of insects that seeped over the glass until they were thick on it, hovering outside, waiting.

Thousands of them.

Remo moved closer to the. glass, fascinated. “They’re mechanical. They’re freaking robots.”

“Yes.”

‘Think they’re poisonous or something?”

“No poison,” said the tiny voice from a small, wall-mounted speaker. “But they nip.”

Remo looked around the room, finding the small black speaker grille and the shining glass eye of a lens. “They nip? Sounds downright disagreeable, Mr. Whoever-the-fuck-you-are.”

“Look at it as being pricked with a pin.” He spoke English with a thick German accent.

“Not even worth a Band-Aid.”

“Think about being pricked with four or five thousand pins, one after another. A drop of blood here, a drop of blood there”

“I get it,” Remo said. “It adds up until you run out.”

“Exactly.”

“Unless the batteries run out,” Remo said.

“They won’t.”

“Sure, they will. I don’t care what you’ve got in there. Duracells. Everreadys. DieHards from Sears. No battery lasts forever.”