Unpopular Science

Then Remo felt the shaking of the ground beneath his feet, and the shaking intensified and whatever made it came closer.

Something black came through the night, avoiding the lighted places, and stepped through the line of bushes that served as the property’s back fence. It moved slowly, with extreme deliberation, but every step seemed to disturb the earth. Remo found his eyes trying to slide off the thing, and yet there was nothing translucent or invisible here. It was simply very, very black.

He heard and felt the well-oiled actuation of gears and chains and mechanical drives, reminding him of his fascination with the mechanics of a greasy old carousel from a charity carnival that once came to the orphanage that was his home as a boy. He also saw the glimmering electronics inside the black pits of its skull, and he felt the electronic eyes as they swept constantly in all directions, alert to threats.

But Ironhand didn’t see the Masters of Sinanju in the darkness. It read their body heat, but the thermal signature was far outside any of the parameters it classified as human. It couldn’t hear their breathing because they did not breathe.

When it stepped from the lawn to the patio stones, there was a click of metal on rock, enough to awaken the exterior lighting. The twin porch lights blazed to life, a single steel arm smashed them out.

But the stealth paint must not have worked too well in full illumination, and in the second when the light was on they all saw Ironhand, clear as day.

It was a metal monster eight feet tall. Its heavy, chunky torso and limbs were of forged steel, constructed a century ago in a blacksmith’s shop. Its head might have started out as a heavy-duty stovepipe, then augmented with welded accouterments such as a hard- forged mouth and heavy-steel eye reinforcements. Ironhand walked on massive steel feet that were center hinged. At every exposed joint Remo glimpsed black-painted copper coils and clusters of electronics that were definitely not original equipment in 1904.

Mark and Sarah jumped to their feet and Sarah came to the twin French doors onto the patio. She opened them, stood in front of the thing.

“Ironhand.”

Remo really hoped the thing didn’t answer, “Hello is all right”.

Instead it said, “Yes, Slate.”

“Who is running you, Ironhand?”

“Archibald Slate III.”

“Liar!”

Ironhand turned away from Sarah Slate, casting its eye-mounted visual sensors over the lawn. It scanned left to right, clicked something in its skull and scanned right to left, then completed its 360-degree turn to face Sarah.

“Archibald Slate III requires documentation from Archibald Slate I.” He spoke in a synthetic, clipped voice, but with a German accent.

“You lie.”

“Ironhand is incapable of lying.”

“You’re just a computer, aren’t you, Ironhand? I know computers aren’t supposed to be able to tell an untruth and I know that is bullshit. A computer does what it is programmed to do. You’re programmed to say lies.”

“Give me documents of Archibald Slate.”

Remo moved fast as Ironhand raised its arm. He wondered if Ironhand was outfitted with the same sort of firepower as Mr. U. Not that it mattered, since any sort of gunfire from such close range was going to be a killer.

He floated over the lawn and brought his fist down hard on the arm, finding its weak spot and breaking it open in one flash of movement.

Ironhand sensed the attack in a microsecond and turned on Remo, intending to crush with a savage blow of the arm it now understood to be damaged.

Chiun floated out of the night and caught Ironhand off guard again, befuddling its sensors, and the old Korean probed the gaping eye socket, yanking out components.

Ironhand swung at Chiun, found nothing, searched until it found any anomalous heat signature, and triggered.

Remo saw the barbed fork come at him in a halo of crackling blue electricity and stepped aside effortlessly.

Sarah Slate screamed and Ironhand spun to face her. Remo didn’t know what was in those electric barbecue forks exactly, but it couldn’t be good. He couldn’t let Sarah get fried.

“Hey, Robby! This way!” He waved his arms, and Ironhand spun back at him, fired again, and Remo stepped aside. The projectile was like three wicked barbed daggers welded together at the base and electrified until they trailed static lightning. The air burned from their passage.

Before he could strike again, Ironhand began the rapid recharge of its electrical system. There was a tiny whir of the generator.

Remo crashed to the earth as if he’d been hit with a big truck.

It wasn’t electricity. It was just the opposite for Remo Williams. Instead of being jolted with current, the life energy was suddenly sucked out of him, so hard and fast he didn’t have time to think. He just went limp.

Ironhand thrust one arm directly at Remo Williams and triggered another forkful of voltage.