Unpopular Science

“I knew you could hear me. I asked you not to touch the FEMbots.”

“I did not touch it,” Chiun sniffed. “And if I had?” He nudged the robot with his foot. The robot vanished, but not so fast Remo missed seeing it go.

He also witnessed Chiun’s quick slice-and-snatch, but didn’t comment on that, either. Just sighed and resumed his patrol.

When the FEMbot reached an altitude of twenty-seven feet, it entered the EDS MUAV LAWZ, and that, naturally, sent the military into a tizzy.

The door burst open. “Mr. President!”

The First Lady was instantly awake and sitting up in bed, eyes wild. “What’s happening?”

“Haven’t I told you folks to knock first?” the President asked.

“Security emergency! Get up, please. You, too, ma’am.”

“What kind of security emergency?” the President demanded, putting down the legal pad on which he had been journaling.

The Secret Service agent tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the notepad for a fraction of a second-just long enough to read the words “Octet of Evil” doodled in big, block comic-book letters. There were many explanation points after it. He looked away quick. “There’s been a breakdown in the FEM system. Please come with me.”

“Whoa, partner.” The President put his hands up. “A breakdown is not an alarm.”

“There’s been an anomalous event,” the second Secret Service agent explained.

Dammit! the first agent thought. He hated it when the Chief Executives started getting cocky. And they all did, right around the third year. But he also hated rookie Secret Service agents. Didn’t he know—you never, ever give the President too much information.

“Describe anonymous in this pretext,” the President added.

“Context, dear,” the First Lady said, still frightened.

“We think we’ve got a micro-unguided air vehicle in the vicinity of the White House,” the agent informed him.

“This follows an aberrant malfunction in the fielded FEM units,” the rookie added detrimentally.

“Stay here with the First Lady.” The President swung his legs out of bed and dragged on his long flannel robe, scuffed and patterned to look like suede.

“We’re here to escort you below.”

“You will stay here with my wife. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Mr. President—!”

“Agent,” the President interrupted, “there’s a certain senator whose husband used to be Chief Executive, and this senator is requesting an increased Secret Service guard be assigned to her. Interested in a transfer?”

The agent began to tremble visibly. “No, thank you, sir. I’d prefer death by fire ants, Mr. President.”

“Then stay with my missus, Agent, she’s quite nice by comparison.”

The President made a quick jog to the Oval Office, brushed off the aides and agents who tried to get his attention and slammed the door behind him. A fine powder of plaster crumbled down from the ceiling. The President snatched a phone out of his desk.

“Yes, Mr. President?” answered the director of CURE.

“Your boys on the property?”

“I would assume so, sir.”

“You told them what I said, didn’t you? That they couldn’t beat my robo-rats, and they took it as a challenge?”

“Er, that is possible, sir. I’m monitoring the alerts on the Executive Defense System Micro Air Unmanned Vehicle Low Altitude Watch Zone. The signal that caused the alarm was from a small object that was, in fact, traveling away from the White House.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Its mass makes it, possibly, a FEMbot.”

“But you’re not a hundred percent sure? What if it isn’t your boys?”

“Do I appear as a boy to you?”

The President shouted and leaped to his feet. It was the old man, who was standing before the desk as if he had been waiting there patiently for minutes. But the President knew he would have noticed an unexpected senior citizen when he first entered the Oval Office. Especially one with severe sunburn.

“Is that Master Chiun? May I speak to him?” Smith asked.

“He may not,” Chiun answered.

The President hung up. “Why you been havocing up my artificial wildlife?”

“Because they are a hindrance to the safeguarding of this symbolic domicile and the figurehead who dwells within.”

“Yeah, well, you busted some of them up. They’re eleven million each.”

Somehow, there was now on the President’s desk a pile of brown hairy things with wires coming out the end. Squirrel tails! The President sputtered as he counted them. “That’s 122 million U.S. tax dollars down the drain! How’d you like it if I took that out of your salary? I get the impression you’re paid handsomely for your occasional contributions—”

That was as far as he got. The old Korean’s eyes were cold, deadly cold. “Surely you would not break your contract with Sinanju. No leader ever breaks a contract with Sinanju. Especially if this is his most effective alternative.” The old man nodded at the desktop full of faux squirrel tails. When the President looked up again he found himself alone.

The old Korean had a point Clearly the FEMbots were not the last line of presidential security that their Pentagon sponsor had proclaimed them to be.

Chapter 32