Unpopular Science

The EVIDA choked on her fuel as Fast blew off the cockpit entrance. “Good riddance,” he told the 1.6-billion-dollar hunk of junk as he stepped out.

He deployed his stealth chute and drifted away as a pair of fighter planes screeched a few thousand feet overhead. The fighters watched the EVIDA ditch in the Atlantic, but they never saw the young man who ejected.

Fast wasn’t a happy camper. A heck of a lot of work had gone down the drain tonight. His only consolation was that, maybe, if he was lucky, the data dump received from Clockwork, now stored in his laptop, might give him a clue about who it was who had beat him.

Because tossing a robot head onto the nose of a screaming jet took special skill. Fast would need ingenuity and strategy to overcome such skill.

His flight goggles’ nosepiece extended to cover his mouth and nose. His empty cushion covering was a backpack that was filled halfway with steel air cylinders. There was a waterproof pack alongside them that accommodated the computer. Fast zipped it closed as he drifted down to the surface of the Atlantic.

Just before he submerged. Jack took a last look at the lights of the shore.

It was gonna be a heck of a long walk.

General Elvgren “Bad Dog” Rover was reading the paper and pretended not to notice his assistant was on the phone. The captain hung up.

“Sir, the BOIID went into the Atlantic.”

The general’s wolfish grimace came and went, detecting something unsaid. “We shot it down?”

“It was shot down,” the captain said. “By someone. Over D.C.”

“Gang crossfire?”

“Unknown, Sir.”

“If it was over D.C., then it was gang crossfire.”

“Well, the street gangs in D.C. are some of the best-equipped in the world,” the captain said uncertainly. “Still, this aircraft was designed to take antiaircraft rounds—”

“Not so far as we know, officially,” Rover said, rattling his newspaper. “Gang crossfire. You writing the press release?”

‘Yes, Sir.”

“Gang crossfire.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Chapter 40

First came the Emperor.

“We should move him to a hospital bed.”

“That will do him no good. You have done every foolish test your charlatan doctors could think of.”

“It would be better than laying him out on the floor.”

“Be gone, Emperor,” said Chiun.

Next came the prince.

“We know how the proton device functions, anyway. The labs are working on it.”

This mattered not at all to Chiun.

“We may be able to repulse it. You know, turn it off. It would require some sort of counteractive device.”

The prince left, eventually.

Next came the woman.

“I am capable of caring for him,” Chiun snapped.

“It cannot hurt for another to care, as well,” said Sarah Slate, taking the hard, limp hand in her own as she lowered into an identical cross-legged position. She looked at Remo and said nothing. She left hours later, but she came back the next day, and the next.

Chiun took rice, he took water, but he seemed to fade.

And all around, the world seemed to fade with him.

Chapter 41

Sarah Slate came into the room again, to find nothing changed. For days it had been like this.

“I have held my tongue.”

There was no response.

“I thought I knew you,” she said to the frail, gaunt little figure in the kimono.

Chiun emerged from his meditation. “You do know me. Leave me be.”

“My family,” she said sternly, “traveled the world for generations. We had incredible adventures. We knew many peoples. I thought I recognized the kind of man you were from reading the histories of my family. I thought I knew you, but I was wrong.”

“Then we can end this pointless discussion. Depart now.”

She was angry; Chiun didn’t know why and didn’t care why. He just wanted her to go away. Now she was scribbling on the walls with a reed brush dipped in ink, which she must have brought with her.

“Look, old man!”

Chiun raised his head.

“I thought this was you. I was wrong.”

She threw down the bottle and the reed, splattering the floor with black ink, and stalked out of the room full of hot indignation.

Leaving behind her a sad old man, and the empty shell of another man, and on the wall, scrawled larger than life, the simple lines of a trapezoid pierced by a single slash mark.

It was the symbol of the House of Sinanju.

It was a poltergeist, or a demon, certainly not a human that came into small suite of rooms in a convalescent wing of Folcroft Sanitarium. The doors literally came off the hinges and rattled to the floor, but by then Sarah Slate was near to death.

“Chiun, stop!” Mark Howard cried as he hoisted himself out of bed as fast as he could move.

“Who are you?” demanded the Master of Sinanju Emeritus, one finger pressed against her throat. “Tell me this before you die.”

Sarah Slate opened her mouth, fighting for breath, her body flattened against the wall as if buried under tons of rubble. ‘Who are you, really, old man? Tell me before I die.”

“I am Sinanju, as you know! But what fool knowingly insults a Master?”

“What kind of a Master insults another Master?”

“I will not engage in word play with one such as you.”