Unpopular Science

They slipped past the concealed military patrol and stepped up to and over the fence, which, at something like fifteen feet high, didn’t appear easy to step over.

“Keep an eye out—this is FEMbot turf,” Remo said.

“You are worried about these mechanical vermin?”

“No.”

“Do they not constitute some new and unassailable threat?”

“No.”

“Why not? They are computerized! They have radio waves and mobile telephones built right in! Surely they will neutralize and nullify the Masters of Sinanju and all their skills.”

Remo stopped in the evening shadow of one of Washington, D.C.’s famous cheny trees. “Little Father, I know why you’re pissed off.”

“I am angry for many reasons. Almost anything you say has a good chance of being correct.”

“Look, Chiun, I know the real reason.”

“I doubt it.”

“You think I’m sullying the Sinanju reputation and hurting future business.”

Chiun stared at him.

“I’m right, aren’t I? It doesn’t matter that we’ve had our batteries drained and our butts kicked. All you care about is that I admitted as much to Mark and Smitty. You think they’ll somehow communicate this information to the kings and queens and despots that hire assassins like us.”

Chiun looked away and fluttered his hand in the night. “If only you had come to realize this before you spoke to Smith.”

“I did.”

“Liar.”

“First of all, Smitty’s not going to gossip about it on the heads-of-state grapevine.”

“He will.”

“Second, we’ve had our ass kicked once or twice before. The Sinanju reputation hasn’t suffered.”

“How would you know?”

“I know we’re getting paid an obscene amount of gold for doing this job, and it’s more than we were paid under the last contract,” Remo said. “Our fee keeps going up, so our value must be increasing.”

“Our value to other emperors is what matters,” Chiun lectured. “We do not know when Smith’s gold will run out, and we must take into account our value on the market.”

Remo nodded distractedly. “Let’s talk about it later, okay? We’re about to face down our first FEMbot.”

Chiun said nothing, putting his hands in his sleeves. Remo was more wary, but it was tough to be worried about a contraption that announced its presence the way the FEMbot did, with a rhythm of low-grade whining sounds from internal drive motors and the clicking of relays and the popping of minuscule air-pressure actuators.

The sound was below the level of most human hearing, but to Remo it was as loud as the beeper on a garbage truck in reverse. It didn’t look real, either.

“Is it my imagination, or is that squirrel goose-stepping?” he asked Chiun. “Maybe it is a Nazi android squirrel FEMbot.”

The FEMbot was aiming at their tree. Remo lowered his skin temperature to fool its thermal sensors and he stood more still than most people would have found possible. He and Chiun conversed in a low, steady drone of sound that would lose itself in the ambient noise of the evening. Whatever the FEMbot used to look for intruders, it wasn’t working. The fake squirrel never gave them a second look.

“That thing probably cost the taxpayers ten million,” Remo said as the squirrel laboriously dug its claws into the tree and scissored through the branches.

“All that good money for a device that falls apart at the slightest touch,” Chiun said, batting the FEMbot on the top of the head. The FEMbot was instantly transformed into so much scrap metal in a bad nylon fur coat, which slammed into the earth so hard it imbedded itself.

“I’ll take this side, you take that side,” Remo said. “Try not to do that anymore, okay? There’s probably a keeper on the premises who’ll come looking for his malfunctioning Nazi android squirrel FEMbot.”

“Then the robot rodents should keep their distance from Chiun, Master of Sinanju Emeritus.”

“Yeah. I’ll spread the word.”

That was when the boring part of the job set in. Remo kept moving, kept an eye out and found himself ridiculously at his ease when it came to stepping around cameras and sensors, making himself unseen to the Secret Service patrols, and making himself generally nonexistent as far as the FEMbots were concerned. He circled the entire building every half hour, invariably finding Chiun tailing one of the executive defense squirrels. Chiun would toss cherry twigs onto the lawn around the robot, making it turn sharply, then turn again, until he had it spinning in circles. This was apparently not good for the drive systems that moved the stiff little legs. The squirrel would eventually jerk and come to a halt, internal Servos whining, and there would be a burning smell.

“I asked you to leave them alone,” Remo said in a whisper that didn’t distract the canine sentinel that was almost within arm’s reach. A hundred feet away, Chiun smiled and waved, showing no sign he heard Remo’s admonition.

“Oh, great,” Remo told the Rottweiler. “Now the old goat’s going deaf on top of everything else.”

The Rottweiler was oblivious to both intruders and continued his Because-He-Can activity. Chiun, however, sneered. “On top of what else, Remo Williams?”