Unpopular Science

Smith glared at the top of his desk, beneath which was hidden his new, enlarged flat-screen display. The brilliant, high-resolution images had been an unexpected quality-of-life improvement for Smith. The new image reduced the tension that Smith hadn’t even known he was experiencing when he viewed his old display. That didn’t make it any easier to see what he was seeing now.

“This is a failure. This should not be happening.” Dr. Smith spoke with subdued anger; this was not his usual sour disposition. “Remo could be at the buyers’ market right now, getting the answers, finding the stolen units, getting control of the situation. Instead our fate rests in the hands of one CIA operative who may or may not have a chance of even placing a bid.”

“We could send the Yuma police to find Remo,” Howard suggested.

“Remo would ignore them as he’s ignored our other messages,” Smith said dismissively. “When was our last call to Mr. Roam?”

“Four hours,” Howard answered, glancing at his watch.

“Intolerable.” Smith turned and looked out his window, where the waves of Long Island Sound crashed against the shore. He turned back. “Please get an update from the CIA while I try calling Mr. Roam myself.” Dr. Smith felt foolish as he rang the line of a mobile phone somewhere in southern Arizona. It picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” The man sounded curious, and he sounded familiar.

“Hello, Mr. Roam?”

“You want Sunny Joe?”

“Yes, please, this is extremely urgent.”

“Uh-huh. Hold on.” The voice called out to someone else. “It’s Dr. Smith-for-brains. Where’s Sunny Joe?”

Smith felt cold numbness grip his hands. Who was this? Why had Remo revealed Smith’s name to him? A young woman answered, “Riding the lines.”

“He’s out checking fences,” said the young man on the line. “Call back tomorrow.”

Smith said, “Mr. Roam went out to check the fences and he did not take his mobile phone with him?”

“Yes.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Oh, you think I’m lying? You’ve got some nerve calling me a liar after what you’ve done.”

“Who is this?”

“Hanging up now, Smith-for-brains.”

“Wait! I’m looking for another man by the name of Remo. It’s possible he’s a guest of Mr. Roam’s.”

“No duh, Smitty.”

Smith breathed deeply and asked, “May I speak to Remo, please?”

“Doubt it.” The young man lowered the phone and announced, “It’s Dr. Strangehate from the loony bin. You home?” Then the young man said, “He says he’s not home right now.”

“I must speak to him—it’s extremely urgent,” Dr. Smith said sternly.

“Go to hell, asshole.”

Smith seethed and dialed again. It rang once. “I’m sorry,” said the young man when he answered again, “but the mobile phone you have called has been flushed into the septic system. Please try your call again never.” The speaker filled with an intense flushing sound, then the strange acoustical muffling that came of being under water. The phone functioned for an amazing four seconds before the electronics shorted and Smith was left listening to silence.

Mark Howard entered.

“Bad news.”

Smith said nothing.

“The CIA buyer was made. They murdered him in his hotel room. The Company watchers think the buy went down about the same time he was getting his throat hacked.”

Dr. Smith nodded stiffly, then said. “Mark, you will please go to Arizona at once.”

Chapter 5

Nightmares are usually the stuff of fantasy, conjured to help the subconscious face its fears. In nightmares, one can live through the worst possible events and it makes the trials of real life seem less awful.

But Remo Williams was dreaming of the past, of events that had actually happened, and it was worse than anything his mind could have imagined.

First came the horror of Kali. Kali confronting them. Kali, the Devourer, alive inside the body of Jilda, mother of Freya.

Almost as soon as he saw her confronting him, Remo saw her dead, killed by an Asian man so small, so old, he looked too feeble to brush a spider from the kitchen table. Horror and self-condemnation dawned on the face of the little Asian man as he realized who he had just killed.

Then came the horror of Kali, the Devourer, alive inside the body of Freya herself. Remo’s daughter. His little girl.

“Red One, remember me,” his little girl said to him in the voice of something ageless and evil.

Then came the collapse of brick and stone, and the hours of digging in the rubble, the flash of golden hair. He extracted her little body from the ruin, a limp thing that wasn’t dead—Remo would not let her be dead. Almost through his own force of will he breathed life back into her.

So it was a dream that ended well enough, as in reality. Freya survived, and she still lived, but in his dream there was a nameless dread.

The dream shifted abruptly. Now there were no great events. No four-armed inhuman beings, no speaking gods. There was just Remo and a friendly woman, who was not an enemy, in a narrow room. Somehow every item in the room clashed in color and design with every other item in the room.