Dr Quake

"Yeah, I guess so," Remo said. He was wearing a white bathing suit, having just come in from the pool to meet Wyatt. "Well, good luck," he said. "And listen. If you could get some idea of who those people are, I know folks in Washington who'd like to know."

"I'll try. You can count on that," Wyatt said, wrinkling his chin in a grimace of determination. He picked up the suitcase and left. Remo watched him walk toward his patrol car.

So much for Wyatt until nightfall. When Remo had spoken to him in the morning on the telephone, Wyatt hadn't been at all worried when Remo lied

So his delivery wasn't until dinner-time, at least. Reno would pick him up before that.

Remo went back through the dining room's sliding glass doors to the pool area. As he passed through the dining area, he heard the television in Chiun's bedroom blasting forth the continuing saga of Dr. Lawrence Walters, psychiatrist at large. Chiun's vice: hopeless addiction to TV soap operas.

What was it the man said about California? Remo wondered, as he lay himself down on the slate deck around the pool? The place where all the misfits of the world congregate, under the assumption that since they were going to be miserable anyway, they might as well be warm.

He'd buy that, he thought, as he felt the California sun toasting his bones. Wade Wyatt, Doctor Quake, the twins, Curpwell, the Mafia. He should write a book. About the interesting people he'd met. And the interesting people he'd killed. How many now was it? He had stopped counting. In the hundreds anyway. Just one at a time. Even the slaughter of a thousand persons begins with but a single death. Yep, he should write a book. Smith'd like that. Cut him in for part of the royalties. He'd like that better.

Remo felt himself fading away into a nap. And then he realized he was not alone.

He rolled to his side and in one motion was on his feet, his hands curled at his sides, poised on his toes.

Jacki and Jill stood there. They wore thin yellow dresses that barely reached the tops of their thighs and that hid none of their curves. They ran their eyes openly and hungrily along Remo's body; suddenly he felt naked.

"My, my, the nervous type," the one on the left commented. Remo compared her bustline carefully with her sister's. The one who spoke was Jill. She was bigger.

"And what balance," added Jacki. Remo felt foolish poised on his toes that way, in fighting position. He let himself softly down onto his feet.

"Speaking of balance," he said, "how do you two manage to stand up? It seems a violation of a natural law."

"We encourage violation," Jill answered.

"Moving violation, I hope?" Remo asked.

"There's no other kind," Jill returned. "Tell me, is this all you do? Lie around the side of the pool? Don't you swim?"

"Sometimes."

"We came to thank you . . . really thank you, for helping the professor yesterday."

"Glad to help." He fought to keep his eyes on the girls' faces. Once a tit man, always a tit man.

"Now that we're here, aren't you going to invite us in the pool?"

The girls were having that effect on him again, so Remo sat down on the edge of the low diving board.

"Sure. Help yourself."

They giggled at his discomfiture. Then, in that way known only to women and chimpanzees, they reached their arms up behind their backs and unxipped their dresses.

Slowly, they wriggled their arms from the short sleeves. The dresses fell softly on the sun-yellowed slate. They kicked off their sandals, stood there before Remo, naked, the sun glinting blue off their ebony hair, their skin creamy white as if it had never known sun. Their hips were lush, their legs long and full. Their waists were small and rising above them were jumping to his feet and shouting. Except that he couldn't stand up.

These were the kind of girls, Remo thought, that men rarely dreamed about. In their dreams, men wanted beautiful women-but women who were human, who could be taken, violated, and overpowered by a man's lust. The twins in front of him now were too much for that. So ripe, rich and sensual that they were overpowering, a normal man would shrink from them because he would know that his lust could never conquer them. No matter how strong it was, his lust would be burned up by their sexual heat and proved inadequate.

That's how a normal man would feel. Remo was no normal man and he felt rising in him a lust beyond lust.

"Do we embarrass you?" Jill said.

"No, I like liberated women."

Jill cupped her own breasts. "Good. We like being liberated."

They approached Remo and sat down, one on each side of him on the diving board. Their hands were on his thighs, then Jacki put an arm behind his head and planted a kiss on his mouth, a long-lingering kiss in which her tongue darted into and probed his mouth.

He felt hands pulling off his bathing trunks and then his swimsuit was down around his ankles and his feet were being pulled from it. Jacki's mouth was still over Remo's and it felt as if his lungs were being sucked from him. Then he was pulled to his feet and hands were all over his body, pulling at him, feeling, stroking, rubbing. Every time he moved, he felt breasts rubbing against him, soft breasts that shuddered when his skin touched them.

Then there was no more deck and the three of them fell into the water. Remo felt himself being manipulated and he and Jacki were joined under the water. They broke the surface for air, then Jill plunged down and then was at Remo with her face, her tongue and lips moving. Remo planted a hand and began stroking rhythmically in the rolling waters of the pool that now slapped against the tile sides.

He felt Jill shudder spasmodically, her body releasing tension, and then Jacki pulled her mouth away from his and arched her body, crying out, "Don't stop. Don't stop."

Remo was angling them toward the pool ladder, pronging one along, pulling the other along with a fingertip, and he steered them up the ladder and followed them up, still conscious of his manhood.

"Inside," he said hoarsely.

"We're going to do you now, Remo. And do you. And do you," Jill said.

They walked toward the glass doors that opened into Remo's bedroom. Then Chiun stepped out into the poolside area. Remo felt suddenly embarrassed and stepped behind Jill before turning.

Chiun looked at the girls with distaste and at Remo with loathing.

"Oh, you're cute," Jacki said. She stepped toward Chiun. "Let's," she suggested.

He just stared at her. "Let's make it a foursome," she said.

Remo turned and went inside with Jill. Chiun looked at Jacki coldly. "I do not perform in public," he spoke firmly.

"Shy?"

"No. I am civilized. Only cattle and beasts of the field copulate in the open."

She got down on her knees in front of him, offering him her breasts. "Come on," she said. "Please. You'll never forget it."

"The last woman I had, I was twelve years getting rid of," Chiun said. "I need no more slaves. Go with him. You will find him adequate in every respect. He is your type exactly."

Chiun turned and walked back into the house, heaving his shoulders in a sigh. Poor Remo. He would always be an American. Always a fancier of cows. He should have been a dairy farmer.

Jacki stood up, followed Jill and Remo into the bedroom. They were already tangled together on the bed and she stood alongside them, trailing fingertips along their bodies, then she moved to join them. Jill was throbbing again and Remo felt himself being rolled off her by Jacki.

They were insatiable. It was like making love to an octopus which had come to drain his vitals, to dry him up, to turn him into an aged man in one lasting moment of lust.

Out in the living room, Chiun watched his TV tape of As the Planet Revolves. He watched his tape of Edge of Dawn. Then he stood up and turned off the television.

He heard steps behind him.

He turned.

Remo was there, buttoning a black, short-sleeved shirt. He wore black slacks and black sneakers.

"Well, little father, are you ready?" he said.

"I am always ready. And the forward ones?"

"They'll rest now," Remo said.

As they left the house, Remo saw the twins' Volkswagen bus parked at the door, behind his rented red hardtop. In the back seat of the camper was probably how they were keeping it safe. By carrying it around with them.

Sure enough, the doors were unlocked. Remo saw the keys in the ignition, and pulled out the key ring, reached in and locked the doors.

"Be just a minute, Chiun," he said and walked back into the house.

He opened his bedroom door. Jacki and Jill were on the bed, unconscious, drained, exhausted, their faces wearing ecstatic smiles.

He tossed the keys toward the bed. They landed between Jill's breasts, which received them with a quiver. She smiled in her sleep at the sensation.

Remo softly closed the door and walked out. Let them sleep. They had earned it.

He whistled softly as he hurried out the front door and got into the car, where Chiun waited in the front seat. Remo moved quickly now, so quickly that he did not notice the man watching him from the front seat of a black Cadillac across the road, cleaning his fingernails with an ice-pick.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"Chiun? How do you battle a force without vibrations?" Remo asked as they drove to town.

"There is no force without vibrations," Chiun said.

"I've seen one," Remo said. "A water-laser. It generates tremendous power, and no vibrations."

"There are always vibrations," Chiun said, "no matter how small. You must feel those vibrations, then harness them to your own until you are the master of the relationship." He folded his arms.

After a few blocks, Remo said again: "It had no vibrations."

After another block, Chiun said: "There are always vibrations. Like those you feel now. Do you feel them?"

Remo opened his senses for a moment. "Concentration?" he said.

"Yes," Chiun said. "We're being followed."

Remo looked up into the rear-view mirror. The road behind them was empty. He glanced toward Chiun.

"Ahead of us now," Chiun said. "The big, black monstrosity. He just passed us and then pulled to the curb."

Remo slowed down slightly without hitting the brake, glancing at the black Cadillac in which a man sat trying to act nonchalant. Remo looked at his head, the back of his thick neck, as he drove by. Musso, he told himself.

Remo glanced at his watch. Almost six o'clock. Plenty of time before Wyatt would make his delivery. Remo hung a right on the next corner and stepped on the gas. In the mirror, he saw the black Cadillac turn the corner and follow him.

The street was thinned of people now and Remo picked up his speed, barrelling through the town, then out into the flat countryside of truck stops and gas stations. He had seen the place he was looking for the first day he'd come into town with Smith.

The Cadillac was laying back now, a car between it and Remo, and he slowed to get rid of the blocker. The station wagon behind Remo finally pulled out and passed, but the Cadillac stayed nearby, in sight. Then Remo saw the bulb-embroidered sign up ahead: "U-Du-It Car Wash."

It was a one-story cinder block building, really a tunnel open at both ends.

The road was clear both ways. Remo began to sway out into the left lane, cutting his speed and the Cadillac closed the distance between them. Remo kept slowing, watching the approaching Cadillac in the rear-view mirror.

Then, just as they drew almost abreast of the car wash, Remo spun his wheel to the right. His car skidded. The Cadillac driver swerved to avoid hitting Remo and went bouncing off the roadway, turning into the gravel driveway that led to the carwash. Remo gassed his car and pulled up alongside, but slightly behind the Cadillac which was now angled in against the empty car-wash building.

"A regular Mario Andretti," Chiun said. "You must be very pleased with yourself."

"Yes, little father," he said as he opened the door and jumped out.

The driver of the Cadillac was rolling down his electric window-now he hollered out at Remo: "Hey, stupid! What's the matter? You nuts or something?"

He was a big man. Big and thick in the neck; the arm that rested on top of the door showed a heavy wrist and forearm under the sleeve of the pearl-gray suit. His face was lined and hard; his nose a slice of obsidian in his hatchet face; the kind of man, Remo thought, who would kill with an icepick.

"Whyn't you watch where you're going?" Remo called, coming around the front of his car. "You guys in Cadillacs think you own the road."

"Well, what'd you cut me off for?" the other driver shouted.

"Cut you off? Why, you punk," Remo shouted. "If you weren't tailgating . . . get out of that car and I'll put you on your ass!"

The door opened and Musso stepped out. "Mister," he said, "You're asking for trouble." He was big and towered over Remo.

He began to walk toward Remo, slowly, surely, and Remo began to back off. He put his hands in front of him, palms forward. "Now, just a minute, Mister. I didn't mean anything. ..."

"Then you should learn to keep your big mouth shut," Musso said.

He kept coming. Remo was inside the opening to the car wash now, still backing up.

Musso came closer, his eyes glistening with anticipation at the fright and confusion he saw on Remo's face.

Now they were both inside the car wash; it was cool and curiously quiet. Musso reached a hand into his inside coat pocket and slowly pulled out an ice pick whose point was jammed into a bottle cork.

He pulled the cork off, then stuck it in his side pocket. The point of the pick glistened bright and silvery in the stray glints of the late afternoon sun that angled in the front entrance of the car wash.

"Now, wait a minute, mister," Remo said. "An argument's one thing, but you've got no call to...."

"Remo Blomberg," Musso said. "I have a call. I've got all the call I need. Didn't you tell one of my men that if I came back I'd go out in a doggy bag?"

He held the ice-pick in front of him like a street fighter's switchblade, coming on slowly now, his bulk trapping Remo and preventing escape. Remo backed up until he could see from the corners of his eyes that he was standing between the twin chains of the conveyor belt which pulled cars through the car wash.

"You're Musso?" Remo asked.

"I'm Musso."

"I've been waiting for you."

"Good," Musso said, with a smile. "Before I punch you like a railroad ticket, who's behind the earthquakes?"

"I am," Remo said. 'It's my own little shakedown racket. You think I'm going to turn it over to a gang of organ-grinders?"

"That's what I thought," Musso said. Both men were still, now. Remo backed up against the damp strips of cloth hanging from the top of the car wash, marking its entrance, Musso only five feet away from him, the shiny ice-pick weaving back and forth. Over Musso's shoulder, Remo saw Chiun in the front seat of the car, reading a road map.

"How do you do it?" Musso said.

"I tried to tell one of your men. We do it with style."

"Don't give me no smart-ass talk, Blomberg," Musso said.

"It's the truth. Ask anyone. Ask the governor. He's my partner. I took him on as second choice. I tried to interest the Mafia in it first, but they were too busy eating peppers and beating up candy store owners to give a damn. What about you, Musso? You interested? I'll cut you in for one-half of one percent. That ought to give you a fast $137 a year. It'll keep you in ice-picks."

"Keep talking, Blomberg. You're digging your own grave."

Remo glanced at his watch. Time to go.

"Musso," he said. "I don't have any more time to play. The game's over."

He took a step forward toward Musso and Musso lunged with the pick. He Jabbed only air, and then he saw Blomberg's hand close around the blade of the pick and it was pulled out from Musso's hand.

Then Blomberg was behind him, between Musso and his car, and he was waving the pick at Musso, who started to back off. He took one step back and then dove forward at Remo. He saw lights. Then just darkness.

Musso awakened moments later. He was sore and his back was wet. It was dark where he was and he shook his head, trying to clear his vision. He was looking up at the ceiling, lying on his back on the hood of his Cadillac.

He started to rise to a sitting position but then a hand slapped at his throat and he was knocked backward. He turned his head. There was this Remo Blomberg, still holding the pick blade, smiling at him.

"Tell me, something, Musso, did you like your work?"

"Yeah, punk."

"And how about Curpwell? You enjoy killing him?"

"Yeah. As much as anyone."

"Good. This is one for him." And then the ice-pick flashed up into the air and Musso closed his eyes so he wouldn't see it kill him, but it missed all his vital organs. It came down instead through his wrist, and under his wrist it punctured the steel hood of the car. Remo twisted the pick and bent it so Musso couldn't pull it out, and he was nailed there to the hood of his car like a deer in hunting season.

"Think of me in that great car wash up yonder," Remo said.

He walked away. The shock and pain from his wrist paralyzed Musso, but he turned his head and through the windshield of the Cadillac he could see Remo digging into his pocket out at the entrance to the car wash. He brought something out of his pocket-coins-and then he dropped them into a chute.

Suddenly, Musso was enveloped by a whir and then a roar. Hot water poured into his face. Soap jets shot at him, filling his nose and mouth as he tried to scream from the scalding, and he could feel bubbles forming inside his head. He wrenched and yanked, trying to pull himself free, but he could not.

He fell back and looked up. The whirring came from the overhead brushes, giant brushes, two feet in diameter; they were lowering now, coming down, only inches away, then touching Musso's face. They began to spin. He felt the first bristle flick away a gouge of skin from his face. The bristles kept turning, brushing his face, it felt like nothing more than an uncomfortable sunburn, but then the pressure came down harder and harder on him, and there was stinging where the soap was jetted into it. Now he could hear his clothes ripping under the pressure of the brushes. There was more steaming hot water. Then Musso remembered nothing.

Remo waited a full ten minutes at the control panel of the car wash. Then he flipped the lever that activated the conveyor chains and the Cadillac began to lurch forward. Remo fished again into his pocket.

When his body was found the next morning, Musso would be dry and sparkling. Remo had thrown in an extra quarter to give him the special diamond-hard wax finish.

Back in the car, Chiun was still looking at the map. "Korea is not on this map," he said as Remo got behind the wheel.

"No. It's a map of California," Remo said.

"A map without Korea is no map at all," Chiun said, rolled down his window and tossed the map out onto the crushed rock driveway.

"Tell me," he added, "are you always so melodramatic?"

"Only when I know you're watching, little father," Remo said, driving away.

"Watching? Who would watch such a display?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It was growing dark when they got back to town but Wyatt's black-and-white squad car was still parked in front of his office. Remo and Chiun parked across the street in a supermarket parking lot and waited.

It was almost an hour before Wyatt stepped from his front door. Remo spotted his Stetson rolling from side to side on his head as he walked around to get into his car. He still carried the brown leather valise.

Wyatt paused at his door a moment, then looked both ways before sliding in behind the wheel.

He pulled from the parking spot, drove to the end of the block and turned left, heading out of town. Remo eased out of his parking spot and fell in line, a car behind Wyatt, keeping his eyes trained on the oval stoplights on the back of the sheriff's car.

Then Wyatt turned again and he was moving out, faster now, out onto the highway leading up into the San Bernardino Mountains. It was dark now. Remo turned off his lights and drove in darkness, two hundred and fifty yards behind Wyatt.

Remo recognized the road. It was the way to the Richter Institute. So it was Dr. Quake.

Now there could be no mistake about their destination." Wyatt turned off the main highway onto the narrow branch that led only to the shelf of mountain on which the institute was located.

Rerno kept his two hundred and fifty yards distance. Then up ahead, he saw the stop-lights on Wyatt's car flash on and off as he tapped the brake, then come on to stay as he rolled to a stop. Remo quickly shifted into low, to brake the car, then into neutral and turned off the key so Wyatt could not hear the motor. He let the car roll forward, slowing it with his parking brake, finally rolling it to a stop in the darkness one hundred yards behind Wyatt.

That was odd, he thought. Wyatt had stopped short of the bridge that led up into the institute's parking area. Then Wyatt was out of the car. Instead of heading up toward the institute, he began walking along the base of the cliff. Remo remembered the trailer there. He had seen the Volkswagen bus parked in front of it the first day. It was the girls' trailer. The twins. Jacki and Jill. They were behind the quakes.

He had been a damn fool not to realize it before. Of course. They had the device. Probably had made more than one of them. Poor dumb Dr. Quake knew nothing about it. The women's libbers, they were doing it. Probably just for the dough.

He tapped Chiun on the shoulder. "Follow him," he said softly. "See what he does and where he goes. I'll meet you up there in the parking lot."

Chiun stepped away from the car, a tiny little man in a black robe. He took two steps away from the car, then vanished in the blackness of the night.

Chiun was Ninja, of the Oriental magical men who could follow a bird in flight, who could appear and disappear at will; the invisible men of the Orient. Remo knew, intellectually, that there was no magic; that it was all tricks and training. But beyond intellect, he knew too that with Chiun it was more than tricks and training. It had started that way. But it had become a magic of its own.

Wyatt whistled tunelessly to himself as he stepped heavily along the broken earth that marked the location of the San Andreas fault. Do no good to fall in, he told himself. No good at all.

And only three feet from him, but unseen, unheard, undreamed of, followed Chiun, his steps timed with Wyatt's, moving softly, sideways, not even breathing. He could have followed at a distance. A matador could have worked three feet from the bull's horns. But if he was a good one, he didn't have to. Chiun was a good one.

Remo waited and then started the motor again. As quietly as he could, he drove ahead, past Wyatt's parked car, across the wooden bridge and up into the institute's empty parking lot where he backed the car into a corner, out of sight of the roadway.

It had been the girls. And the dead men? The water-laser had been used to crush them. That was why their bodies were wet around the waist: the force of water had been used to drive their intestines from their bodies. Probably after sex, when they were too weak to resist strongly, he thought, remembering the open flies on the trousers of the men in the ditch.

Remo sat in the car, silent now, and remembered a lot of things, things he should have noticed at the start if he had been any kind of detective at all. How the girls dodged questions yesterday about the two Mafia men they had gone off with. The giggle when one said something about picking the men up "along the road."

He remembered something else too. Leaving his own house this afternoon and seeing the bright blue had come to use it on him. After they had drained and exhausted him.

He smiled to himself. Score one for Remo, As a matter of fact, score two.

He did not hear the car door open. He knew Chiun was there only when he felt the pressure of someone sitting next to him on the seat.

"Where did he go?" Remo asked.

"There is a trailer there. He carried, the suitcase in and put it in the refrigerator. I took it out. Here it is."

Down below, Remo heard Wyatt's car start up and a moment later, he saw the oval tail-lights speeding down the road.

Chiun had the money on his lap. What would happen if they didn't put it back in the girls' trailer?

Let's just see, Remo said to himself.

He started the motor and drove out of the parking lot. Smith'd be happy to get his money back. And Remo would be happy to get the girls.

But when he got back to his house, the girls had gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"He was the bravest man I ever met.

"He was the smartest, finest, one hundred percent American I ever met.

"He was the nemesis of all law-breakers, no matter how big or powerful they might be."

"He" was Sheriff Wade Wyatt and he was dead. He lay naked in the master bedroom of his ranch-style house, under the seven-foot square blow-up of the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi with the photographer's name blacked out in the corner.

The bed around his midsection was soaked with water, and his entrails fought their way out of his mouth. His eyes were opened wide in deadly horror.

Looking down on the sheriffs body, working out the phrases of his eulogy, sucking on a Mary Jane, was his deputy, Brace Cole. It had not occurred to him yet that the sheriff had met a terrible death.

Cole was ready now, in case he should be asked for a statement by anyone.

So he looked around the room. He saw no clues. He looked at Sheriff Wade Wyatt's body. Just like the two guineas that they found dead in the ditch. Just like Feinstein and that geology fellow from Washington.

The men in the ditch. What was it Wyatt had said? "I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do

with this." That's what Wyatt had said and he meant that Remo Blomberg, that wise-ass running that store.

Well, Sheriff Wade Wyatt, befitting his grandeur as a human being, had been the kind of man who would tolerate a great deal before cracking down. But not Brace Cole, who was now the acting sheriff of San Aquino County, pending an election within sixty days for Wade Wyatt's unexpired term. Brace Cole was not about to let that Blomberg get away with it.

Wade Wyatt's holster hung from the bedpost and Brace Cole went over to it, then removed the .44 calibre revolver. He spun the cylinder to make sure the gun was loaded, then fingered the notches on the gun butt.

"Sheriff," he said to Wyatt's intestine-packed face, "We're going to put another notch on your gun."

Then he went out into the midnight of San Aquino County. He had not noticed the printed note on the floor near the bed, which read: "Double-crossing American pigs. Now you pay."

Across the town, Remo sat on the blue suede sofa in his living room, talking to Smith. Chiun, still wearing his black robe, sat on the dining room floor, staring through the glass windows toward the dimly-lit pool area.

"The Mafia's out of the game," Remo said. "I don't think they'll be back. But now I've got to get the girls. Quake's assistants."

"Why did they do it, do you think?5

"Who knows? They talk like radicals. More country-haters? Or maybe they just like money. Oh, speaking of money. We got yours back."

"Thank God for small favours," Smith said. "You had better get the girls before they do something dangerous."

"I will," Remo said. "We're going now."

He hung up and said, "C'mon, Chiun, let's go."

The old man rose to his feet and followed Remo out the front door. They drove from their circular driveway only four minutes before acting Sheriff Brace Cole arrived.

When he saw his prey had vanished, he broadcast a bulletin over his police radio:

"Notice to all departments in the San Aquino area. Watch for a red hardtop, rental plates, being driven by one Remo Blomberg. He may be accompanied by a little Chink. Both are wanted for suspicion of murder. They are dangerous; should be considered armed and approached with caution."

Remo parked his car up in the parking area of the Richter Institute, in a corner away from casual sight. It had been a quick trip. He had been racing at full speed when a state squad car got behind him and gave him the siren, but Remo lost the trooper by dousing his lights and skidding into the turnoff to the institute. He glanced back down toward the road. There was no one following him.

He and Chiun walked down a rickety flight of wooden stairs that led to the twins' trailer. The Volkswagen bus was not there. Remo and Chiun went into the trailer, to wait in the dark for the girls.

If they were going to make a quake, a big one, they'd make it someplace near here, he told himself, hoping he was right, hoping they had not just fled. This was the spot where the fault was locked, where the greatest pressure was and where their water-laser would have to be set to rip off California.

Rip off California? How many? Thirteen million people? And how many would die? A million? Two million? How many would lose their homes and their roots? Their businesses?

A million corpses. Lay them out and they'd reach halfway across the country.

Remo heard a motor, the tinny sound of a four-cylinder engine, then doors closing, then voices. He slumped down in his chair.

"The lying, thieving government. They must have had somebody follow Wyatt and steal the money." That would be Jill. "Well, now they'll pay for it."

"I don't think so." That was Jacki. "I think the big pig tried to keep the money for himself."

There was a giggle, then Jacki said, "Did you see the look on his face when we let him have the water-laser? Poor bastard. He didn't even get a chance to dip his wick." She giggled again.

They were standing now outside the trailer. "But I'd feel better if we had gotten a chance to use it on Remo. What did he do to us anyway?" Jill asked.

"I don't know," Jacki answered. "That never happened before. But I think that stupid deputy will take care of Remo. Particularly since we called him and told him that we saw Blomberg leaving Wyatt's house. When he finds Wyatt dead, he'll take care of Remo."

"Maybe," Jill said. "C'mon. We're going to set this equipment and then get out of here before the state blows. Pig government."

Remo heard footsteps walking away from the trailer, crunching twigs and leaves underfoot. He rose and peered through a window. Under the bright light of the California moon, he saw the two girls, each carrying a water-laser, walking away from the trailer, up along the edge of the fault, toward the spot where Remo knew the two drill shafts stuck up from the ground. "Let's go, Chum," he whispered.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I think it will be beneficial to wait. You go."

Remo shrugged and stepped lightly down from the trailer. What was on Chiun's inscrutable mind now? There was something.

Then Remo, still clad in black, slid silently through the night, following the twins,

They were twenty feet ahead of him. When they came to a large clearing, they stopped. They got to work immediately, beginning to hook the water-lasers together, to double their power. Then they lugged them over to the shaft that jutted up from the ground, and began to fasten the coupling to the shaft.

Remo stepped out into the clearing.

"Hi, girls," he said cheerily.

They froze in position, squatting over the equipment.

"Remo," they hissed in unison.

"Yup. It was so good today, I thought I'd come back for more."

One of the girls stood up. In profile, he could tell it was Jill.

She walked slowly toward Remo, her arms extended as if in greeting. "We've thought of nothing else," she said. She licked her lips and in the moonlight, they glistened black and white. Now she was at Remo; she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts up close into him.

"You know what I think?" Remo said softly.

"What?" her tongue asked his ear.

"You would have made a great bull dyke."

He pushed her back and she fell to the ground. Jacki was still bent over the water-lasers and Remo headed for her. Then an explosion ripped the air. Remo was knocked off his feet. He felt a searing pain burn into his shoulder.

A voice roared over a portable bullhorn.

"Remo Blomberg! I know you're down there. This is acting Sheriff Brace Cole. You're under arrest for the murder of Sheriff Wade Wyatt. Now come on up from there or the next grenade'll land right in your lap."

Remo was stunned. The grenade had barely missed him, and he could feel a trickle of blood running down his left arm from a fragment in his shoulder.

He shook his head to clear it, then saw Jacki stand up and away from the water-lasers. The familiar thumping had started.

"Too late, pig," she said. "This whole state is going."

The water-lasers were thumping now, churning. Remo could almost feel the energy building up inside them.

"Come on, Jacki," Jill said from behind Remo. "Let's get out of here."

"Sheriff," she called. "We're coming out. Don't shoot. He's been holding us prisoner. Don't shoot."

"Come ahead," boomed the voice of Brace Cole. "I'll cover. . . ." And then his voice stopped, in mid-sentence.

Remo got to his feet. Another voice came over the loudspeaker, speaking English in a precise sing-song. "The sheriff has decided to take a nap." It was Chiun.

"Sony, girls," Remo said.

They attacked him. Nails, fingers, feet and breasts clawed and hammered at him. They all missed. Then Remo had the girls from behind, an arm around each, holding them by the boobs and he dragged them past the water-lasers, to the gash in the earth that was the fault line.

He tossed them in. They hit with a thud, eight feet below him, and lay there, stunned. Remo turned back to the two water-lasers. They were screaming now, building up pressure, ready in moments to start pouring their gallons of water down into the shaft, a concentrated spurt of force that could tear a state apart.

Remo looked for switches. The machines still thumped. He couldn't find out how to turn them off.

He put his hands on the coupling which joined the machines to the shaft and wrenched. The coupling snapped loose and just at that instant, the water started to pour out of the end of the tubes.

The jarring force of the pressure paralyzed Remo's arms. He spun. The water poured out in a powerful cohesive stream. With all his strength, Remo aimed it down toward the ground, into the fault.

The water was barrelling now into the crack in the earth. Then the earth groaned, and as Remo watched in fascination, the earth began to close up. The girls screamed, then the sound stopped as the earth closed over them, then the lasers ran dry.

Remo looked down at where the gouge in the earth had been.

"That's the biz, sweethearts," he said. Two lives against maybe a million. Still, they had had great tits.

The ground shook again and Remo was knocked off his feet. He fell heavily on his bleeding shoulder. Another grenade, he thought.

But it was no grenade. The ground rocked and vibrated.

A quake, Remo realized in horror. But how? The water-lasers had been disconnected. He laboured his way to his feet, unsteady on the ground. He took a step in one direction. No, the force was coming from the other direction.

Had they set another device, timed to go off? Why then had they been working on this one?

Remo took off, over the shaking ground, racing along the rocky ledge, trying to find the source of the power. He ran heavily and he realized he was losing blood from the shrapnel wound. Then a tiny figure in black flashed by him, passing Remo as if he were standing still, out-distancing him, racing far ahead. It was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, running across the shifting, sliding earth as if it were a cinder track.

Remo ran full sprint but Chiun pulled ahead. While Remo's legs pumped, pushing him forward against the shifting thrusting ground, Chiun seemed to glide motionless, moving through an inner momentum, the legs just keeping pace. Chiun pulled farther ahead into darkness.

Birds called, shrill caws of danger from their aerial safety. Remo saw a fear-crazed collie ,run at him and stumble into a somersault, its hind legs pumping furiously as though running uphill. The earth churned and the air was thin.

Into the brush Remo ran, cutting himself on brambles that came lurching at his face. Then he was in a clearing, and there, rising on long aluminium stilts like the shell of an unfinished steeple, was a giant water laser, twenty times larger than the ones Remo had seen before. And in this clearing, a half-football field wide, was stillness, a stillness surrounded by earth amok. It was as though a still hand suspended from an aloof moon held it placid in a sea of chaos. The earth smelled of ozone, the calls of the birds were muffled as though the vibrations of their sounds sucked from the air.

Dr. Quake was on his knees as if in prayer. He was in pain, and this Remo knew because the black robed figure of Chiun stood over Dr. Quake, one hand on the neck as if squeezing a collared pigeon.

Remo almost fell because of the sudden quiet of the earth. His reflexes were attuned to the previous vibrations and still reacting to them. This upset was only momentary; he moved to the pair quickly.

Remo heard Dr. Quake groan:

"It can't be stopped. No one can stop it. It feeds on its own progression. It generates itself."

"That which is started can be stopped." Chiun's voice was even and as distant as the moon.

"They wouldn't listen to me. If they had listened I wouldn't have done this," said Dr. Quake.

Chiun released the hold on the neck.

"He has told all he knows," Chiun said.

"Where are Jacki and Jill, my daughters?" sobbed Dr. Quake looking at Remo. "They were supposed to meet me here."

"They're where they belong," said Remo. "How do you stop this machine?"

"It can't be stopped," sobbed Dr. Quake.

"He tells the truth," said Chiun. "He surrendered to the pain and has told all he knows." Chiun looked up the aluminium stilts of the water laser. "Is this the machine with no vibrations?"

"Yes," said Dr. Quake.

"It's going to blast water into the lock at tremendous pressure," Remo said to Chiun. "The state is going to snap along the fault." He had to yell just so his voice sounded normal.

"Is this space here free of vibrations because the machine has harnessed them?" asked Chiun.

"Yes," said Dr. Quake.

"You are wrong," said Chiun, "Everything that moves has vibrations. Life is vibrations."

"That's your philosophy, not science," said Dr. Quake. Then he cried for his daughters and called them his poor innocent babies.

Chiun looked at Remo.

"If this is your science and this is what it has brought you, then I say your science is false. Life is vibration, movement is vibration, being is vibration. The universe is a vibration. Your science has created a machine that appears to have forgotten vibrations. I will have to remind it."

"Chiun?" said Remo. He wanted to warn but knew not how.

"You believe that science is one thing and the spirits of man another."

"Chiun, this is a machine. If it were a thousand men, little father, I would not doubt you."

"It is all one," said Chiun, and he briefly surveyed the long stilts and the giant metal nozzle pointing into the belly of the earth. "I will remind this insolent machine of its vibrations."

"We're all doomed," yelled Dr. Quake with laughter that was despair, a final not-caring before the end.

"Fool," said Chiun to the kneeling figure. And his black robe disappeared up the stilts. Remo could discern only an edge of the robe outlined against the moon at the pinnacle of the steeple.

The robe fluttered once and then the earth seemed to explode. The muffling silence became a shriek as if someone had clanged cymbals in Remo's ears. The stillness became a giant snap as if someone had pulled strings on Remo's legs; he was suddenly somersaulting, his legs flying wildly. Then a tremendous vibration slapped Remo's finely tuned body

Blood filled his mouth. He could not focus his eyes.

He was rolled over, and he saw the moon as a fuzzy yellow bulb above him. He groaned and then breathed. Something blocked the moon. He heard Chiun's voice. Chiun was standing over him.

"It broke. Heh. Heh. Nothing works in America except me."

"Ooh," said Remo. "What happened?"

"I taught this little device to remember its vibrations."

"Don't let Dr. Quake escape," said Remo. He felt wet coolness envelop his back.

"Escape? He was in even worse condition than you. He is dead, his body unable to accept a little-buffeting."

"A little buffeting? I almost died."

"Last year you ate a hamburger with ketchup and said that would not harm you. Two years ago it was a steak. And even at your Christmas time you consumed a bubbling drink laden with sugar, yet now you complain of a little buffeting."

"Will I make it?"

"Not if you kill your body with your mouth."

"I mean will I be able to walk again? Have I bought the package?"

"You mean will you return to your former standards of shoddy performances, gross eating habits and disrespect?"

"You like to take advantage of the helpless, don't you?"

"When I tell you to consume only healthy foods, I am helping you. But you do not wish to be helped. When I tell you proper mental attitudes, you forget them and do not wish to be helped. Now you ask for help. How do I know you will take it?"

"Disrespect, you learn well."

"Please."

"Breathe to fullness," Chiun commanded, as though Remo were back in the first days of training, when he heard the elderly Oriental explain that all force came first from breathing.

The breathing was painful and then Remo felt another shock and he was on his feet. Water puddled around his ankles. Dr. Quake's body was folded in two, his chin resting on his groin, his spinal column snapped. Behind him the aluminium spire had also snapped, and water gushed harmless undirected from two large pipes.

The moon played golden on the sloshy wet ground. The birds no longer called in hysterical shrieks. The California night air tasted fresh and good and rich.

"When the machine remembered its vibrations, it died," said Chiun.

"That explains it," said Remo. "How are you with electric toasters?"

"Better than you young white man," said Chiun, using what Remo knew was Chiun's ultimate insult.

"You wouldn't happen to know the geological result of all this, would you?" asked Remo.

"The earth is wounded and it will one day shriek in pain. I would not wish to be here when it yells."

"I guess that says it all."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The mini-report over the telephone was a pleasure in its delivery. Smith was truly shocked that Dr. Quake had been behind the scheme. And suddenly Remo realized why.

"He was on our payroll. Admit it. One of ours. That's why you didn't think he was involved. Admit it."

"I don't know everyone who's on our payroll," Smith said dryly. Remo cradled the receiver in the crook of his neck. He had shut the door of the pay phone booth, apparently trapping a full third of California's insect population.

"Wow," Remo said. "That's something. You put a guy on the payroll who nearly destroys half of California."

"Don't forget the million and a half," Smith said.

"What a loser you turned out to be," Remo said.

But the click of the phone across the continent interrupted his gloating. The pleasure disappeared like the coin in the phone box.

Remo cracked open the box with a snap of his forefinger, shattering the lock. He opened the change vessel with a crush of his right hand and scooped up nickels, dimes and quarters. Then he threw them at the California moon. He missed.