Unpopular Science

“Excuse you what?” Rover demanded.

“East Coast United States Secure Airspace,” Rover’s pet captain explained.

“What happened to Secure East Coast Air Watch?” The crowd tittered. The air traffic controllers looked at their screens to hide their amusement, and even a visiting Pentagon official scratched his ear to hide his mirth. A janitor rolled his eyes as he pushed his mop bucket into the hall in a big hurry.

“What’s wrong with you people?” Eivgren “The Bitch” Rover exploded.

“The SECAW designation was retired more than a month ago.”

“What? Why?”

“To allow the new designation to be used—District of Columbia And Surrounding Environs Coastal Airspace Watch Perimeter. DOCASECAWP. It failed to roll off the tongue. Sir. The designation was therefore changed to ECUSSA.”

“Why in blazes didn’t they just change it back to SECAW, then?” demanded General Eivgren “Fido” -Rover.

There was silence. The flight controllers looked at one another questioningly, and the officers mulled it over or pretended they knew the answer. Rover’s captain said simply, “Nobody thought of that. Sir.”

“That’s why they call me ‘Smart Puppy’ Rover, Captain.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The Pentagon official, who had once worked in acronym development, was feverishly writing notes on his palm with a ballpoint.

“What about the BOIID?” interjected the controller, who added quickly, “The Belligerent of Indeterminate Identification.”

“Shoot dat BOIID. Didn’t I say that first thing when I walked in here? What’s everybody still talking about it for? Captain, I want court martials for every man in the room. You, too.”

“A moment of your time, Sir,” the captain said.

The exasperated Air Force general accompanied his assistant into a private corner. “We can’t shoot it down, Sir. That’s why I asked you to be consulted in this matter, Sir. The aircraft is behaving like an EVIDA—it’s an Extreme Velocity Intrusion Delivery Aircraft.”

“Never heard of it.”

“In development by the Navy. Top security. But the grapevine says the prototype was stolen recently. No other aircraft we know of could go from a slow stealth airspeed to Mach 5. EVIDA is designed for it, Sir.”

General Elvgren “Sly Dog” Rover nodded thoughtfully. “The Navy’s, you say?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Shoot it down.”

The captain turned to the loiterers in Command Control. “General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID.”

“General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID,” echoed the Pentagon official, who appeared to have some authority here.

“General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID,” radioed the controller whose task it was to relay such orders.

General Elvgren “Bow-Wow” Rover asked quietly, “You sure I’m not supposed to know anything about this Evita?”

“EVIDA, Sir. No, Sir. Even I am not supposed to know.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here before they start singing.”

The room continued echoing with calls of “Shoot down dat BOIID,” and did, indeed, come dangerously close to becoming a chorus.

“Evening, Little Father.”

“Hello, Remo. Rested?”

Remo got to his feet, evaluating the grinding of bones in his chest.. “Small fracture,” he said offhandedly. “Nothing too serious.”

“I know this, of course,” Chiun said The smell told Remo he was no longer on the grounds of the White House. He found they were standing in an alley.

“What did you bring that for?” he asked.

“This contrivance?” Chiun asked. “I deemed it could be of value to us. We shall present it to the Emperor for evaluation by his laboratory hirelings.”

“It’s Clockwork. It’s the robot we saw helping Ironhand in Providence,” Remo said. “The one from the TV show. He had a key in his back for winding him up.”

The robot’s body was a copper ball more than two yards in diameter. Out of the gasketed opening at the top protruded a scrawny copper tube of a neck, topped with a copper sphere of a head the size of a basketball. He had ears that were pounded out of tin and riveted in place. A mouth was etched into the metal surface and almost hidden under the layer of scratched stealth paint that coated it head to toe.

“He is not a windup toy,” Chiun said. “He was once powered by a device such as this.” Chiun held up a small egg-shaped lump of steel with dangling wires.

“You took that out of Clockwork?”

“You removed this from Ironhand.”

“I did?” Remo gazed at the thing. “I remember trying. I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to actually do it.”

Chiun showed concern for the first time. “The mechanical man kicked you in the chest, and I thought you were senseless, and yet you did not release your grip on what you were grasping. You pulled this Out of Ironhand and he ceased to function. It was a foolhardy thing to touch it, Remo.”

Remo relived it in his memory, the blackness that came upon his senses and seemed to erase his consciousness. “Little Father, it was not like dying. I’ve died. Death I know.” He fixed the old Korean master with haunted eyes. “This was worse.”

Chiun nodded, but couldn’t understand what Remo had endured. Perhaps, Chiun thought, Remo was correct about this device. Perhaps it was a weapon that was more than just a rock.