Brain Storm

16

Remo and Chiun took the interstate from New York onto the Jersey turnpike. On either side of the high-way, industrialized New Jersey was a joyless, flat expanse of smoke-belching factories built in swamps.

At night the ugly yellow glow of a million parking lot and chimney lights gave the flats the surreal tone of a depressing futuristic film. In the day, everything just looked squalid.

Chiun sniffed at the air, thick with chemicals and other pollutants. His face became a pucker of displeased wrinkles. "Why do they call this province

'new'?" he asked Remo.

"Because it was at one time," Remo replied.

"The newness has been eroded. It is time it was renamed Old Jersey."

"I think that's over in Europe. It's an island or something in the English Channel."

Chiun's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Its history predates that of this malodorous place?"

"By centuries."

"Remind me never to visit there, Remo, for time has surely allowed the vile Old Jersians to amass an even greater volume of filth than their descendants."

"Not very bloody likely, but I'll make a note of it," Remo promised.

They got off the turnpike near Highland Park and threaded their way over to Edison.

The PlattDeutsche America complex occupied a separate corner of an industrial park near the edge of town. It had its own fence to cordon it off from the other buildings on the site. Several tin patches decorated in red, white and blue adorned the fence at regular intervals. They sported the logo of a private security company.

Remo parked his car in one of the nearer lots and he and Chiun walked the rest of the way over to the PlattDeutsche America compound.

It was nearly nine and the place was open for business. People hustled from building to building. Cars were continually passing back and forth through the main gate.

4 'I don't like this," Remo warned. "Maybe we should wait until tonight."

"I do not wish to prolong my exposure to this foul air. When you were last here, to which building were you brought?"

"That one," Remo said, pointing at one of two matching buildings at the front of the complex. It was a gleaming steel-and-glass structure. The early morning sun reflected brilliantly off hundreds of huge, glistening black panes.

"Then that is where we begin."

Chiun's hand chopped down. The links of the high fence popped, one after the other, beneath the side of his razor nails. When there was a large enough gap in the fence, he wrapped his fingers around the serrated edge and drew it back.

Remo followed Chiun through the tear in the fence and the two of them made their way across a stretch of well-watered lawn for the main building.

"I don't think we should barge in through the front door," Remo said when they were on the sidewalk encircling the building. A vast parking area stretched out to their left.

"The Master of Sinanju does not use the servant's entrance," Chiun sniffed.

Remo paused on the sidewalk. Grudgingly Chiun stopped, as well.

"Look, Chiun. It doesn't make sense to announce we're here. You might not be worried about that gadget of theirs, but I am. If we go in the front door, their security is going to know something's up. We don't even have passes."

Chiun glanced at the entrance. Several employees were passing into the building at that moment, their laminated security tags attached to a lapel or hanging from the neck. An older woman had one clipped to her pocketbook.

"Wait here, O worrier," Chiun said with an annoyed sigh.

Stranding Remo on the sidewalk, Chiun flounced off toward the parking lot, disappearing behind a tall row of neatly trimmed shrubs. He returned a moment later, two plastic tags in his frail hand. He handed one to Remo. "You may stop worrying now."

Remo looked at his tag. It identified him as Louis Washington III. A charcoal black face was pasted in the corner of the pass.

"This doesn't fill me with much confidence,"

Remo said as he affixed the tag to the collar of his T-shirt.

"These will not even be necessary," Chiun insisted. He clipped his tag to the front of his kimono.

"I am merely indulging you. Come."

As if he were master of the entire PlattDeutsche complex, Chiun marched boldly for the door. Reluctantly Remo trailed in his wake.

Less than a minute later, they were roaming the corridors of the company's research-and-development wing. The passes had gotten them beyond the main security desk and onto the elevator. The guard at the R&D level hadn't even looked up when they disembarked from the elevator.

A gold-embossed sign above the main corridor read Advanced Research Division, but it looked as though the research division had become fixated on a single item. Almost the entire floor had been turned over to the Dynamic Interface System. Down the hall were a few smaller signs announcing Computer Labs, DIS; Product Design, DIS; and Physical Cryptology.

On the door of the last lab, a hand-written note was taped to the wall: 4'Dr. Curt Newton, resident genius."

Chiun sniffed the air. "I do not sense the vibrations of the innerfaze device," he said.

"They might not have the machine turned on,"

Remo suggested.

"Is this the correct floor?"

Remo glanced around, considering. "I'm not sure.

All these rooms look alike."

Chiun nodded his understanding. "The banality of American architecture."

"Maybe we should split up," Remo suggested, thinking it would improve the odds that one of them would destroy either the interface equipment or Holz.

It would eliminate the chance that they would both be taken at once.

"Agreed." Chiun spun on his heel and marched down the corridor.

As he watched him go, Remo noted that the old Korean looked very small, very frail. He wished he could have impressed upon his teacher the frustration he had felt at being manipulated so easily. It was a feeling of helplessness he wished the Master of Sinanju would never have to experience.

"Chiun?" Remo called.

"Yes?"

"Be careful."

Chiun did not turn. "I am never not."

Newton affixed the electrodes carefully. His test subject—a program accountant—appeared disinterested in the procedure. Newton talked while he worked.

"I was surprised to find a lot of his abilities were stored in memory," he said over his shoulder.

Von Breslau, from his spot near the electrocardi-ogram machines, looked up for a minute. "That is consistent with my knowledge of Sinanju."

"Is it?" Newton sounded upset. "I wish Lothar had been more up front about everything earlier. I hate playing catch-up."

"I see in your notes something about 4co autono.'

What is this?" Von Breslau was near the electrocar-diogram. His thin lips pursed unhappily as he read some of the hasty notes Newton had scrawled to himself in the van the day before.

"Controlled autonomous," Newton explained.

"That was the only way I could think to describe it.

He is able to physically control every autonomic response. It's like one big motor nervous system."

And the nervous system is altered, you say?"

Newton laughed. "It would have to be, wouldn't it? But I don't think it's been altered medically. It's more likely the result of an ongoing training. My people speculate the level our Subject A was at took at least a decade to achieve. Perhaps more." He finished with the electrodes and joined von Breslau near the monitoring equipment.

"Quite probably," von Breslau agreed.

Newton took a seat at the same monitor station Mervin Fischer had worked from the previous day.

He absently hooked his feet around its metal legs.

"Fischer eliminated temporal junk from the program. All limbic stuff. What we're working with is a distillation of his physical attributes alone."

"Have you raised the dopamine level?"

"There's a precursor to the main file that will trick his basal ganglia into elevating the level of dopamine."

"You should monitor ATP, as well."

"I'm not taking any chances." Newton tapped away at the keyboard. "I'm pushing everything else up, too. ATP, serotonin, acetylcholine. Everything.

Fischer didn't have sense enough there. Bright guy when it came to programming, but a bit of a neo-phyte with the rest of the interface system. His failure to chemically compensate might explain the reaction he got." He entered a final command. "I'm ready."

"Have you set your machines to deliver the information slowly?"

"I've increased the download time by a factor of four. If it becomes necessary to slow it any further, I can break in manually."

Von Breslau seemed satisfied. "Proceed," he said.

Newton glanced over to the spot where the bodies had been. They were gone. He had no idea where Holz's assistant had hidden them. The light brown patch on the floor where Fischer's blood had stained could have been caused by a spilled cup of coffee.

Newton took a deep breath and tapped out

"Copy" on his keyboard.

Erich von Breslau stared at their test subject, an expectant, avaricious expression on his features.

Exhaling loudly, Newton hit the Enter key.

In the hallway one floor above, the Master of Sinanju felt the electrical signal switch on.

It was different than it had been. Not as far-reaching. More concentrated. But though the signal was faint, it remained distinctive.

Chiun didn't hesitate. Black sandals slid in confident silence along the drab grey hallway carpeting.

Moving swiftly, he headed back down the corridor to the elevators.

A guard intercepted him before he reached the end. "Hold it, old-timer,'' the man said. A hand snaked cautiously to his hip holster.

"Out of my way, lout. I am on important innerfaze business."

"Are you?" the guard said skeptically. "Then you might be interested to know we've had a security breach. We found two of our people unconscious in the parking lot. Both of them were missing their security passes."

"That is not my concern," Chiun spit. "As you can see, I still possess my special identification."

"You're Stella Tresaloni?" the guard said. He indicated Chiun's laminated security tag. A woman's smiling face beamed out from the corner of the pass.

Chiun didn't have time to deal with niggling details. He left the unconscious guard behind an empty receptionist's desk and raced for the elevator.

"Cut the speed in half."

"Already?"

"Do as I say," von Breslau commanded. He watched their test subject carefully. "How do you feel?"

The man's shoulders lifted in a bored shrug. "I don't know. Kind of a little tingly, I guess. Is this going to take much longer?"

The two scientist ignored him.

"I've reduced the rate by half," Newton said.

"Chemical production has adjusted accordingly."

"His heart rate is elevated. Skin tone flushed."

"That isn't unusual."

"No." The German thoughtfully steepled his fingers, then ordered, "Increase by a quarter. Slowly."

Newton made the adjustments. Fischer's program informed him on the computer screen that there was a slight dip in the level of adenosine triphosphate. In the time it took to relate the message, the computer had compensated for the change.

The computer downloaded through the interface program for nearly another minute. Von Breslau stood beside the test subject throughout.

At last he held up a hand. "Let us stop here for a moment."

"Already?" Newton asked. He sounded disappointed.

"Shut down your machine."

Reluctantly Newton did so. He went over to the man and removed the electrodes from his forehead.

He had been so engrossed in his work he hadn't noticed the change in the EKG. The normal spikes that were present when he had begun monitoring had dropped. There were no more of the rough triangular shapes. There was now a serene waviness to the line.

Like a gently rolling sea. He pulled the electrodes from the man's chest

4'Pick that up, please," von Breslau said to Newton. There was a heavy steel crowbar lying on the floor near the gurney. Holz had borrowed it from the gar-deners earlier. It was a five-foot-long rod they used for prying up rocks or stumps on the grounds.

The tool was much heavier than it looked. Newton grunted as he hefted it from the floor.

Von Breslau looked down at the man on the gurney. "I want you to bend this, if you would be so kind."

"Are you out of your mind?" the man said. He glanced at Newton. The scientist's face showed intense strain from holding the bar.

In return, von Breslau smiled tightly. "Please humor an old man."

The man shrugged. "This is crazy," he said. He reached out and took the bar from Newton. And almost bowled the scientist over. He wrenched the bar out of Newton's hands, lifting it high in the air.

"What the—? This thing's light as a feather."

He lowered the heavy bar and took it in one hand, rolling it from palm to fingertips. The truth was, it felt lighter than a feather. It was as though the crowbar had substance, but no weight.

"Now, can you bend it?" von Breslau asked.

The man laughed. "Sure. No problem." He placed his hands approximately two feet apart on the bar and twisted. There was an angry cry of protesting metal, and when he was finished, the bar had a U-shaped bend.

There was a gasp from the room. But not from either von Breslau or Newton. An enraged voice cried out from near the door.

"Thieves!" it shrieked.

Newton turned. Von Breslau puckered his lips, his eyebrows rising in annoyance.

The Master of Sinanju stood in the doorway, his bony hands clenched in balls of white-hot rage. Tight hazel eyes shot charged streams of fury with laserlike intensity at the pair of men across the cold laboratory floor.

"Fiends! Barbarians! Plunderers of greatness! Prepare to pay for your venal pilfering in blood." And like the angry driving wind propelled at the fore of a furious tempest, the Master of Sinanju whirled der-vishlike into the laboratory.

Remo had decided his time might best be served trying to locate Lothar Holz.

Holz was a vice president, Remo knew, so it seemed logical he'd be wherever it was vice presidents hung out. Since the building didn't seem large enough to house an eighteen-hole golf course, Remo opted to check the executive office suite.

He abandoned the R&D level and took the stairwell at the end of the hallway up to the offices.

He found the place swarming with tanned, trim executives, just a hair or two on the younger side of middle age. Their expensive suits were tailored to perfection, and as they walked past Remo, he over-heard them discussing everything from actuarial tables to market placement to on-line strategy. It was worse than any image of hell the nuns at Saint The-resa's Orphanage had tried to instill in him.

Remo assumed that someone along the way would try to stop him. He wore his usual black T-shirt, black chinos and loafers. In this sea of suits, Remo thought he stuck out like a sore thumb. What he didn't realize was that in a company used to many computer-related projects, he wasn't dressed unusually when compared to any of the computer

programmers on staff. It was assumed by everyone that Remo was just another programming nerd.

Everyone, that was, except for Lothar Holz's secretary. "Hello, there," the girl purred when Remo entered the office at the end of the hall. She placed an emery board she had been drawing languidly across her index fingernail into the top drawer of her desk.

"This is Holz's office?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," she said. She leaned forward. "Can I do anything for you? Anything at all?"

"You can cool your jets. I'm here for Holz."

Remo headed for the door, but the girl was quick.

She leaped from behind her desk and plastered herself against the inner-office door.

Her body was pressed between Remo and the

door.

"Mr. Holz isn't in right now."

"I can hear his heart beating through the door."

"That's mine." She grabbed Remo's hand and placed it on her chest. "Let's go someplace and talk," she urged.

Remo didn't have time for this. He tapped the woman lightly on the inside of her wrist. She gasped once loudly, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed sideways onto the office sofa. A broad smile stretched across her overly made-up features.

Remo popped the flimsy door lock and entered the inner office.

The pain from the Dynamic Interface System signal was immediate and intense. It was far more powerful than it had been the day before.

It felt as if someone were dragging his brain and spinal cord out of his body through a raw hole in the back of his neck.

Then all at once, the pain receded.

Lothar Holz was seated behind his desk. A row of tinted windows behind him overlooked a grassy courtyard. Beyond the courtyard was the matching PlattDeutsche building, reflecting its sister structure in its glassy facade.

Remo tried to lunge for Holz, but was rooted in place. He heard the door behind him close and saw Holz's male assistant step out from his peripheral vision and move across the office to stand behind his boss.

4'Don't bother to struggle. You know how pointless that is."

Remo gritted his teeth. "Not as pointless as you might think."

He was surprised to find that, unlike the previous day, the impulses weren't arrested when he tried to speak.

"We've eliminated certain aspects of the program.

Speech, most involuntary responses. The pickup time is greatly increased. You can thank Dr. Smith for that. His input—so to speak—has helped us a great deal. He delivered you over to us in every sense of the word."

Holz grinned triumphantly.

Remo felt foolish. He wanted to say something like You 7/ never get away with this, but the fact was he had already experienced the futility of trying to battle the powerful radio signal. He had tried for hours the last time and had failed. He screwed his mouth tightly shut and stared stonily ahead.

Holz tapped a pen on his desk. "When the interface van didn't check in, the entire building was wired yesterday for your eventual return. Sort of a Sinanju frequency. I don't suppose you'd want to tell me where the van is."

"Go goose a gorilla."

"Your cooperation is irrelevant—we will find out what we want to know easily enough."

Remo remained silent.

"Understand this, Remo, your consciousness may still be yours, but your body now works for me."

Holz turned to his assistant.

"The interface van is at the sanitarium in Rye. Get it." The man nodded and move toward the door.

Holz called after him. "If Smith attempts to stop you, kill him."

Remo heard the door close behind him.

"It became necessary to import assistance on your unique case," Holz said. "You might be curious to see how we're progressing." He called downstairs on his office phone and instructed the technical staff to move Remo down to the fourth floor. Holz then went over to the broken office door and pulled it open.

Remo felt his legs kick in automatically. Woodenly. Again he felt the sensation of some outside power forcing its will upon him.

Though he tried to stop it, he felt the interface signal coursing into his brain, seeping down into his limbs. In spite of his determination, he knew it was no use. He followed Holz out the door.

The expression on Holz's face was insufferably smug.

Remo wanted to rip the smile right off his smarmy face. And unbeknownst to Holz, he still had one chance. One thing the man hadn't bargained on.

Remo prayed the Master of Sinanju would be able to locate the source of the signal and stop it once and for all.

They had nearly been killed.

Von Breslau seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, but maybe he didn't understand what a close call it had been. Only Dr. Curt Newton knew that they had made it by the skin of their teeth.

The old Asian had blown into the room like a man possessed.

His hands flailed; his legs pumped. Jaw clenching furiously, he had swooped toward them.

He was halfway to them when his actions began to slow.

The signal had kicked in automatically, as it had been programmed to do, but there was a time lag.

The Dynamic Interface System signal hadn't been able to cerebellum lock as quickly as usual. If the mainframes hadn't already been programmed with the information obtained from the younger one, they would never have stopped the Asian.

His speed continued to decrease as he came across the room. In the end, he was like a child's toy with worn-out batteries.

He froze a foot away from Newton.

"What is this sorcery!" the Master of Sinanju demanded. His hazel eyes were sparks of uncompre-hending fury.

Newton ignored Chiun. He tried to copy the old doctor's calm demeanor, though his heart pounded at the closeness of Chiun's attack.

He spoke directly to von Breslau.

"You'll be interested to know we've just refined the program to include speech. Before, we were forced to take hold of everything. It took up tons of computer space. Now we're able to be much more selective."

Chiun's eyes were wide in shock as he tried desperately to move his limbs. He couldn't budge them an inch.

The test subject seemed baffled by the strange ap-parition in the kimono. Newton tapped him on the leg. "Why don't you take off for now? We'll call you back when we need you."

The man nodded his understanding. He hopped down from the gurney and began buttoning his shirt.

He paused a moment, startled. "What—?"

He held his hands out in wonder. The pads of his thumbs and forefingers were covered with a faint white dust. He had crushed one of his plastic buttons to powder.

"A result of the test," Newton said quickly. "Just take it easy on things for the rest of the day. Until we can get back to you."

The man left the room, staring in amazement at his own hands.

Von Breslau had shuffled over to Chiun. He brought his face to within inches of the old Korean. "This one is very old," he said to Newton. He looked even more unhappy than usual.

"An understatement, I'd say," Newton agreed.

"His physical reactions are astounding for a man of any age. But they're even more astonishing for someone of his obviously advanced years."

"You have lived a long life," von Breslau said to Chiun.

"Longer than an apricot. Not nearly as long as a mountain." The Master of Sinanju had contained his initial rage. Through a monumental effort, he held himself in check.

"You were Master when Berlin fell?"

Chiun did not speak. His eyes were as cold and barren as the belly of the deepest, iciest sea. His mouth was a razor slit.

"You murdered the chancellor." It was a statement of fact, as well as an accusation.

"If you refer to the strutting little fool with the comical mustache, he ingested poison and shot himself when he heard the Master was coming. Double ignominy for a preening jackanapes. This, of course, after he had bravely taken the lives of a pregnant woman and a dog."

"You lie!"

"He was a coward who sent fools to die for his base cause. His black-booted storm-poopers were de-valuing the market for true assassins."

Dr. Erich von Breslau's normally bitter features had slowly churned into a burning fury. "Liar! You are a murderer! And you will stand and watch, filthy Korean mongrel. You will watch while I wrap my hands around your own lying throat and squeeze the life from you."

The arms of the Nazi doctor shook with rage as he reached for the unguarded throat of the Master of Sinanju.

Though von Breslau had the determination, it was unlikely he had the strength to follow through on his threat. He never found out. For at the precise moment his palms brushed Chiun's Adam's apple, Lothar Holz entered the lab, Remo in tow.

"Doctor, stop!" Holz raced across the room and grabbed von Breslau's wrists. His hands had just encircled Chiun's throat. Curt Newton, who until that moment was a spectator in the exchange between the pair, joined Holz. Together they pulled von Breslau away from Chiun.

"He will die!" von Breslau barked.

"That is not the plan!" Holz said.

"It is my plan!" von Breslau was furious. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he spoke. His eyes were daggers of hatred aimed at Chiun.

"Curt, please see that this one is transferred down here." Holz nodded to Remo.

Newton reluctantly pulled himself away from von Breslau. He called to the regular interface labs to have the signal controlling Remo switched over to the subordinate mainframe in the current lab.

When Newton was out of earshot, Holz lowered his voice. "Four wants both Sinanju masters."

"Those of Four do not understand," von Breslau said.

"They understand," Holz whispered harshly.

"This has been a costly investment. The Americans were not likely to buy into the interface technology anytime in the near future. With the abilities of these men at our disposal, we can recoup our investment a thousandfold. Immediately."

"We don't need them. Your machines can give us what they have. I can make an army like them long after they are gone."

"We don't know that yet. Are you willing to risk the fury of those in command on a single test?"

Von Breslau considered. At long last he nodded.

"Agreed. For now," he whispered. To Chiun, he said loudly, "Remember. You live at my convenience, Korean."

"You die at mine," the Master of Sinanju responded levelly.

Holz smiled warmly. "Doctor?" he said to Newton. He pointed to Remo. He indicated the floor near Chiun with a nod.

Understanding, the scientist punched a few rapid commands into his computer. The interface signal brought Remo from his place near the door, over to Chiun.

The two men stood side by side, motionless. Neither was able to gain comfort from even a sideward glance at the other. They were blocks of deep-frozen ice. Holz clapped his hands together warmly. "Imagine. I have the only two living Masters of Sinanju under my control. Yours is a tradition which spreads back, what, thousands of years?"

"You seem to know a fat lot about us," Remo said. His words were thick with loathing.

Holz beamed. "Actually I probably never would have heard of you," he admitted, "if not for my grandfather."