Unpopular Science

Chapter 14

The strange phenomenon that leeched their energy stopped. Their strength came back. Remo and Chiun felt their vigor seeping into them again, step by step, as they descended through the levels of rooms that clung to the hillside. Finally they came to an elegant sunroom that was all glass, walls and ceiling. The Mediterranean sea was golden in the lowering sun, and long shadows cooled the lawns outside.

There was no one in the sunroom.

There was no one outside.

They were halfway through the room when they felt - it again. Still stumbling with weakness, Remo felt his knees buckle almost immediately, and he grabbed for a wicker chair back to hold himself up.

He didn’t have the strength to be as angry as he wanted to be.

“Shush,” gasped Chiun, giving him a warning look, adding in Korean, “Act natural.”

“There are more of them coming, Chiun,” Remo insisted.

“Then this phenomenon will cease and we will deal with whatever weapon materializes,” Chiun said. “Meanwhile, we are being watched.”

Remo tried hard to stand up straight, as if the reason he had stopped was simply to watch for whatever danger would present itself. What Chiun called a phenomenon had been slightly different with each experience. Now it was as if there were many, many small sources, maybe hundreds, and they came from the very earth outside the sunroom.

Then it stopped.

Once again Remo felt the intense relief as the energy began to elevate rapidly into his body, but he wasn’t fooled this time. He wasn’t free of it. Not yet.

“Must we stand here and await an attack?” Chiun complained in English, obviously wanting their voyeurs to hear.

“Nice place for it,” Remo said. His recuperation was slower than it had been previously. Would he get his strength back before the attack came? Would he get it back ever?

If they ran for it now, weakened and exhausted, they wouldn’t get far.

A tiny shadow passed over the window. A pair of dragonflies darted about one another just outside the glass.

Another pair.

Then the dragonflies began billowing out of the bushes, forming a storm cloud of insects that seeped over the glass until they were thick on it, hovering outside, waiting.

Thousands of them.

Remo moved closer to the. glass, fascinated. “They’re mechanical. They’re freaking robots.”

“Yes.”

‘Think they’re poisonous or something?”

“No poison,” said the tiny voice from a small, wall-mounted speaker. “But they nip.”

Remo looked around the room, finding the small black speaker grille and the shining glass eye of a lens. “They nip? Sounds downright disagreeable, Mr. Whoever-the-fuck-you-are.”

“Look at it as being pricked with a pin.” He spoke English with a thick German accent.

“Not even worth a Band-Aid.”

“Think about being pricked with four or five thousand pins, one after another. A drop of blood here, a drop of blood there”

“I get it,” Remo said. “It adds up until you run out.”

“Exactly.”

“Unless the batteries run out,” Remo said.

“They won’t.”

“Sure, they will. I don’t care what you’ve got in there. Duracells. Everreadys. DieHards from Sears. No battery lasts forever.”

“There are no batteries, Mr. Remo Annoying. Your name is apt, by the way. They have electric power cells that provide any amperage needed for an extended period.”

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Stalling for time worked on that idiot Cote but it won’t work on me.”

“Are you sure, idiot?” Chinn asked.

“I am sure, Korean. It is I who have been stalling you. As you can see, the swarm is ready to break in.”

Remo and Chiun cast about until they noticed the swarm cloud grow blacker directly overhead, then the dragonflies dived in a steady stream at the window, their tiny, sharp needle heads hitting the glass and bouncing off. The number was so great it was like the sound of serene rainfall.

The pace of the onslaught increased. Every tiny bug removed just the tiniest chip of glass and yet it was enough to erode the pane in seconds.

“If we stay here, they shall eat us alive,” Chiun remarked.

“Ditto if we go out there.”

“Remo,” Chiun said somberly, “I will not get far.”

“Don’t give me the feeble-old-man shit, Chiun. I’m in sad shape myself. But I think running is better than staying.”

“Run if you like,” said the voice from the speaker. “They’ll chase you all the way to France.”

“Chiun,” Remo whispered in Korean, “I bet those bugs can’t swim. We can. Maybe.”

Chiun nodded and said, “Race you to the water.”

At that moment the pane of stormproof glass had been worn so thin it began to spiderweb under its own weight, and as Remo and Chiun emerged from the rear of the sunroom, the glass fell in and the dragonflies began swarming inside, while thousands more descended on the Masters of Sinanju from above, and Remo felt them began to nip at his flesh. They dived at him, swarmed over him, touched him like raindrops and then fell away.

He was too weak to outrun them or to harden his flesh against them for long. Another ten minutes, maybe, and he could have simply run away, or let them prod him incessantly without penetrating his flesh. Even as he felt stronger every second, he felt weaker every second, exhausted from his exertions. The blood was dappling his skin, then it became a sheen of red underneath the smokelike swarm of dragonflies. He tried waving them off but it was like trying to shove away the incoming tide.

He knew he was running because his legs screamed, but it seemed they had made no progress. The air was so thick with the bugs it clouded the vision. How far to the ocean’s edge?

His skin felt raw, his legs heavy, but amazingly his breathing became invigorated. He was recuperating from his weakness even as that weakness allowed him to succumb to the bugs.

Then Chiun was gone from his side. Remo stopped, retreated, waving furiously at the swarms and his returning breath gave him the strength to wipe them away long enough to spot the fallen figure of Chiun.

Remo blundered to him, grabbed the small body and turned back to the ocean.

“Breathe, Chiun,” Remo said.

The dragonflies seemed to form a solid wall in front of him. He would never see it when he reached the edge, and now his flesh was screaming. He was being skinned alive. He felt one foot come down on nothing and he drew back.

“Breathe, Chiun.”

He felt nothing, not even a breath, from the small figure in his arms.

“We’re going in,” Remo said. He launched himself and Chiun out into space, and dropped. Sixty feet of emptiness separated the edge of the land and the Mediterranean waters, with a thin beach at the bottom.

Remo inhaled, knowing his lungs weren’t right. The dragonflies fell away suddenly and for a moment the world was clean and bright Then Remo saw how much blood there was on Chiun, on himself. Every exposed inch of flesh was flayed, and here he was putting them in salt water.

“This,” he said to himself, “is gonna hurt.”

He hit the water and realized just how correct he was.