Brain Storm

22

Leonard Zabik lived in Somerville, New Jersey, in his parent's three-bedroom ranch house. His was the first name on Dr. Erich von Breslau's list.

There was an ambulance parked out front when Remo and Chiun arrived. Its lights were off, its siren quiet.

Remo left his rented car across the street and strolled over to the Zabik home.

Two slow-moving attendants were bringing out a sheet-draped stretcher when Remo and Chiun walked up. The men continued working, used in their jobs to morbid curiosity seekers. Without warning, Chiun pulled the sheet away as the men were lifting the body into the back of the ambulance.

"Hey!" one of the attendants snapped.

Chiun ignored him. "This is the one we seek," he said to Remo.

"Leonard Zabik?" Remo said to the men. He pointed to the body on the stretcher.

"Yeah. What business is it of yours?"

"What happened?" Remo pressed.

The ambulance attendant glanced at his partner.

The other man shrugged. "We're not sure. He was dead before we got here. If you want my guess, though, I'd say an overdose."

The man pulled the sheet back over Leonard Zabik's face, and they proceeded to load the body into the back of the ambulance. The doors slammed loudly shut. Both men climbed into the white-and-orange truck and sped away.

"What do you make of that?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju once the ambulance had gone.

"His body rejected that which it had not earned."

Remo sighed. "I'd better see what happened," he said. He started up the driveway. He was stopped before he had even gotten halfway.

"Yoo-hoo!" The voice came from next door.

A frumpy woman in her early seventies was waving from the front lawn of the house next door. Remo crossed the driveway to a small picket fence, Chiun on his heels.

"Are you with the police or something?" the woman asked.

"Or something," the Master of Sinanju said haughtily.

"I am, he's not," Remo said, indicating Chiun.

He thought the lie more plausible that way. It did not seem to matter one way or the other to the woman.

"I'm Gladys Finkle. I live next door. I saw the whole thing, Officer. That boy went nuts. Absolutely, stark-raving nuts."

"What do you mean?"

"I go over there some mornings to have coffee with Edna, Leonard's mother. Lovely woman. Anyway, I was there this morning, and she goes in to wake him because he's going to be late for work.

He's in the business side of some computer place in Edison. Well he comes ripping out of that room like the house is on fire. I never saw anything like it in my whole life. He's breaking cupboards with his bare hands and chipping Edna's beautiful Formica coun-tertop. I swear he crushed the front of the fridge.

Bent the door right in half. He had a wild look in his eye. Almost like he couldn't stop himself. "Finally he just collapsed right there on the kitchen floor."

"He died just like that?"

"His legs kicked out for a while. And his arms.

Like he was doing some kind of judo or something.

He was gone before the ambulance drivers got here."

Remo nodded. The poor guy had been a victim of his body's inability to adapt to the Sinanju information. He probably didn't even know what had happened to him. They had literally reached a dead end.

And if Zabik was dead, the other poor guinea pigs would be soon to follow.

He thanked Mrs. Finkle and started to leave, ready to return to Folcroft and wait for Lothar Holz to show himself.

"The funny thing is I went over this morning to see if everything was okay. I thought I saw an ambulance here in the wee hours."

Remo was anxious to leave. "Really?" He said the word disinterestedly.

"Yeah. There was a big white truck parked in the driveway. My eyes aren't too good anymore. That's why I went to see Edna. I thought something might be wrong."

Remo's curiosity was piqued once more. "Did she say whose truck it was?"

"It was Leonard's boss or something. He took Leonard into the truck for a while and then let him go." The woman scrunched up her jowly face, a thought occurring to her. "Hey, do you think that had something to do with Leonard dying?"

Remo did not hear the question. He and Chiun were already back in their car. The tires sent up plumes of acrid smoke as Remo spun around and headed back down the street.

The next name on the list was Aaron Solon.

Aaron Solon didn't feel very well when he

awoke that morning.

He spent nearly an hour debating whether or not to waste a sick day but finally, reluctantly, decided to call in.

He found that there was some sort of shake-up going on at PlattDeutsche America. For a minute, Aaron was worried that the company had been bought up and that his job was gone. He even considered going in after all. But his boss assured him that the problem was internal.

There was something wrong in the R&D section.

Nearly everyone with the Dynamic Interface System had vanished. Dr. Curt Newton had been found in a fourth-floor maintenance closet, dead of a gunshot wound.

Aaron felt a little guilty that he was relieved by the news. But in this day of secret mergers and midnight acquisitions, a touch of selfishness was a job requirement. His boss told him to take it easy for the next few days.

Twenty minutes later, Aaron was lying on the living-room sofa. He had just started watching one of the morning talk shows when the palpitations began.

He could feel his heart begin to beat irregularly, almost as if the organ were inflating like an overfull water balloon inside his chest. It felt like it would burst.

His breathing was still good. Centered. It had been that way since he had agreed to undergo the strange test for PlattDeutsche vice president Lothar Holz. He didn't know how he knew the breathing to be right; he only knew it was. And that for the past thirty-seven years he had been breathing completely wrong.

Now, though, it was as if every perfect breath his lungs pulled in was causing his heart muscle to expand and contract wildly.

A heart attack.

He grabbed for the phone. It tumbled off the table near the couch. He clawed for it on the rug. The blood pounding from his chest cavity was ringing hollowly inside his ears.

His hand found the phone. He tried to pull it toward him. It wouldn't budge. Only then did he notice that someone was standing on the cord.

He recognized the man. Young. Long blond hair.

He had seen him around the office. Behind him was another man. Solon knew him, as well. Lothar Holz.

The two men picked Aaron Solon off the couch and carried him out the kitchen door.

They are taking me to the hospital, Aaron Solon thought. They know they did something wrong with their tests and they're taking me for help.

They carried him up through the cab and into the back of a large white van. The van didn't move.

Five minutes later, the passenger side door opened once more, briefly.

Two figures got out, carrying a large, awkward bundle. The same figures returned a moment later, alone.

Slowly the van drove down the long driveway and out into the street.

"This one's gone, too," Remo said grimly.

Aaron Solon lay at the far end of his driveway behind a pair of trash barrels.

Chiun came out of the kitchen door and squatted to examine the body. He touched the man's forehead experimentally.

"Innerfaze," he announced, tone grave.

"Are you sure?"

"Note the circular marks on his forehead."

Remo squinted. Two round impressions were

faintly visible in the flesh at Aaron Solon's temples.

They were consistent with the marks made by the rubber suction cups on Holz's temple electrodes.

"We'd better get to the next one on the list."

Remo sighed.

As they hurried back to the car, one thought kept passing through Remo's mind.

What was Holz doing?

Simon Waxman s wife was leaving her apartment when Remo arrived.

She was accompanied by her mother-in-law.

Simon's father was off handling the funeral arrangements.

Holz had already been there.

The young woman was so distraught Remo didn't detain her.

The same was true for the next four names on the list. All had met with Lothar Holz earlier in the morning; all were dead.

It was afternoon before they reached the final name on the list.

The apartment complex where David Leib lived was near Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Remo left his car in a guest spot in the small parking area, and he and Chiun made their way to the string of two-story buildings.

Before they had even gotten near Leib's building, Chiun was sniffing the air like a dog on a scent.

"They have been here already."

The heavy door splintered and fell back inside the small hallway.

They found David Leib on the floor of his bedroom. All around the room was in disarray. The walls were broken, the bed collapsed. A bureau had been split into two neat halves.

Chiun crouched down near the body. "This one still lives," he announced somberly to Remo.

Remo stooped down beside the Master of Sinanju.

The pupils of the young man on the floor were pin-pricks. His eyes roamed their sockets sightlessly.

"How long ago was Holz here?" Remo asked softly.

Leib shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was distant.

"Hours... hours."

"What did he want?"

The young man nodded. With an effort, he pointed to his own forehead. Suddenly his limbs shuddered as if charged with electricity.

"The interface system," Remo said to Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju nodded gravely. "He steals back that which was not his to give."

Below them, Leib had another violent spasm. The man who had been so delighted to climb walls the night before had become a wasted shell.

He gasped once, grabbing Chiun by the forearm.

"The breathing," the young man said. "It felt so...so right."

Chiun nodded his understanding.

Leib smiled. A final frantic shudder racked his slender frame before he finally grew still.

Remo noted that, in death Leib had centered himself. His arms and legs were in perfect harmony with the forces of the universe. Chiun gently closed the young man's eyelids.

Slowly Remo stood. "I better call Smith," he said.

"Remo, where have you been?" Smith demanded.

His lemony voice seemed distraught.

Remo explained about the list Chiun had found in the PlattDeutsche lab and about the deaths of Holz's test subjects. He also informed Smith of his suspicion that Lothar Holz was retrieving data from the minds of his victims.

"Why did Chiun not show the list to me?"

"I guess he thought it was family business,"

Remo said.

"It was," Chiun intoned, even of voice.

Smith did not press the issue. "Please return to Folcroft immediately."

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was frowning down upon the body of David Leib.

"Why, is something up?" Remo said into the phone.

"They have found one of the missing ambassadors."