The Wrong Stuff td-125

by Warren Murphy

  His short steel-gray hair was cut at right angles. A level could have rested on his granite square chin without the bubble shifting a single millimeter. His eyes were as lifeless and black as the void he had twice visited in two of the tiny Mercury modules.

  When he saw Colonel Codwin straighten, Pete Graham gulped reflexively. Of the three people in his lab, Zipp was the only one who inspired real fear in Graham.

  Buck Thruston was still arguing with Alice Peak. "But we're still in phase one of asteroid exploration. Prestage two should fall under the Director for Outer-"

  He never finished his thought.

  "Faster, better, cheaper!" Administrator Zipp Codwin barked hotly. His words were as clipped and sharp as his yellowing fingernails.

  Buck jumped; Alice gasped. Shocked to silence, both directors wheeled on their superior.

  "Faster, better, cheaper!" they echoed with military sharpness. Buck offered something that might have been a salute if a salute involved two shaking hands and a thumb in one eye.

  The NASA administrator crossed his arms. A deeply skeptical expression settled in the angles of his face.

  "I hear the words, but I do not see the results," Zipp Codwin snapped. "FBC is policy at the new user-friendly NASA. Or have we forgotten?"

  Alice and Buck shook their heads so violently they bumped foreheads. Nearby, Pete Graham shook his head, too.

  None of them could forget NASA's new policy. They weren't allowed to.

  The Faster, Better, Cheaper slogan was now a mantra around the space agency, hauled out whenever anyone questioned its fiscal irresponsibility. Zipp had personally hired an outside public-relations firm to come up with the slogan. It had cost NASA five hundred thousand dollars.

  "No, sir," Pete Graham replied.

  Codwin's nostrils flared like an angry bull's. Marching over to where Virgil crouched, he extended a hard finger.

  "Okay, let's figure this out, then. You built this fast and cheap, right?"

  Some of the tension drained from Graham's voice. He was on more familiar ground here.

  "Yes, sir," he answered. "Under time and under budget."

  "Okay, son," Zipp growled. "I know that. But did you build it better?"

  Graham didn't hesitate. "I thought I did," he said honestly. "I can't begin to fathom why it stopped working."

  Zipp dropped his hands to his hips. He noted a laptop computer hooked umbilically into the side of the Virgil probe.

  "Can't you get the information from it? See what happened while it was in the volcano?"

  "I've been trying," Graham insisted. "It seems to be locked in some kind of self-diagnostic routine. I haven't been able to access the affected systems." There was clear frustration in his tone.

  Zipp Codwin looked back to the probe. When he beheld the cold metal outline, his face puckered unhappily.

  "No beauty to this program anymore," he muttered in what, to him, was a wistful tone. It sounded like he was grinding glass between his molars. "The lunar landers looked like pregnant praying mantises and even they had more grace." He gave an angry sigh, the only kind he was capable of giving. "Don't think faster, better, cheaper cuts it alone. Have to put something about prettier in there."

  When he spun back around, his brow was furrowed.

  "I'm not happy with the results here, Graham," Zipp stated. His dark eyes were penetrating.

  "I'm not, either, sir," Graham said weakly.

  "You shouldn't be. You're the one who screwed the pooch. Access that data," he commanded as he marched to the door. Peak and Thruston stumbled over each other in their race to follow. "Whatever glitches are in that thing, I want them worked out in the FBCest manner possible. Clear?"

  He didn't wait for a reply.

  The door had already slammed shut by the time Pete Graham offered a weak "Clear, sir."

  Alone, Graham exhaled.

  He hated the relief he felt whenever Zipp Codwin left the room. At least he wasn't alone in the feeling. The colonel inspired the same level of fear in everyone at NASA.

  As his nervous sweat began to evaporate, Graham walked over to the immobile probe. He had just retrieved his laptop from a chair next to Virgil when the lab door creaked open cautiously.

  Hoping Zipp Codwin hadn't returned, Graham glanced anxiously to the door.

  Clark Beemer's worried face jutted into the room. "Is the coast clear?" the PR man asked.

  Sighing again, Graham only nodded. He took his seat as Beemer scurried inside.

  "Ol' Zipper reamed you out, huh?" Beemer said as he shut the door behind him. "I figured you'd get off okay. At least you brought it back in one piece. Not like the Mars Climate Orbiter. Twenty-three directors lost their jobs after that fiasco."

  "I'm working here, Beemer," Graham said tightly. His laptop balanced on his knees, he was entering commands into Virgil's systems. At least, he was trying to. Every time he thought he was in, the system unexpectedly dumped him out. It was like playing a game of computer chess where every move was countered perfectly.

  "I'm working, too," Beemer insisted. "Unglamorous as it is, I'm the one who has to sell this thing. I wish you told me it talked. I can work with that somehow."

  "It doesn't talk, Beemer," Graham insisted.

  This had been going on since Mexico. The entire plane ride home Clark Beemer had insisted that Virgil had spoken to him when he first discovered the probe next to the command trailer. When pressed, Beemer wasn't exactly sure what it was the probe had said.

  "I know what I heard," the PR man insisted. His brow clouded. "At least, I think I know what I heard. It didn't make much sense. Something about wishing how it could offer me a drink but that we were on a volcano and there aren't any liquor faucets on volcanos."

  "Idiot," Graham muttered.

  Beemer's face fouled. "Hey, this isn't about me," he snapped. "You're the one who built this mess." He crossed his arms defiantly. For a few minutes he remained silent as Graham worked.

  Pete Graham continued to be frustrated by every attempt to access Virgil's systems.

  "Dammit," he growled after his latest attempt failed.

  "Say, Pete?" Beemer asked abruptly. "Yeah?"

  "Back in Mexico..." Beemer hesitated.

  "What?" Graham said, only half listening. He was attempting to reinstall Virgil's start-up routines.

  "In the volcano," Beemer continued. "You know that thing you had it looking at? The shiny thing buried in the rock?" He stopped again, not wanting to sound crazy. "Well, you were looking at the monitor," he blurted. "Did you see anything weird?"

  Graham glanced up. "Like what?"

  Clark Beemer didn't want to have to say it. Ever since he'd first come to work PR at NASA and made the mistake of asking if he'd have the opportunity to meet an actual Klingon, he had been guarded with his questions.

  "Promise you won't laugh?" Beemer asked.

  Graham exhaled. "Yeah, Beemer, I promise."

  Clark Beemer smiled nervously. "Well, when the camera was looking right smack-dab at that thing," he began, "it looked like-like it moved."

  Graham stopped working. With great slowness he put down his laptop.

  "Moved how?" he asked. And this time there was genuine interest.

  Beemer was warming nervously to his subject. "First, it looked like the whole thing was sort of shimmering. Like when you pet a dog that's got an itch? You know how the whole back muscle sort of moves? That's what it looked like to me. Then just before the video signal cut out, I swore I saw the shell of the thing crack open."

  Pete Graham didn't speak. He just sat there, silently contemplating Clark Beemer's words.

  The scientist would have pointed out that this notion was as ridiculous as Beemer's insistence a month ago that he'd found a piece of red kryptonite in his flower garden, but for one simple fact. Graham had seen the same thing.

  When they'd arrived back in Florida, the scientist had gone over the last seconds of digital images collected from the Virgil probe before it had blac
ked out.

  He saw the shining silver orb buried in the solidified magma. And for a few seconds, it did appear to ripple. But that could have been a reflection from Virgil or even from a pool of molten lava. And, yes, at the very last instant it did seem to split apart. But happening as it did at the instant the probe had apparently begun to malfunction, it could have been some sort of anomalous static pop from the feed.

  The image wasn't clear enough to enhance and it didn't really seem to matter much, since Virgil had somehow found its way home. Pete Graham had chalked it all up to ghosts and glitches and put the matter out of his mind.

  Now that Beemer had brought it up, Graham felt a pang of uncertainty in his gut. Still, he was loath to agree with this nonscientist public-relations simpleton.

  "Just an optical illusion," Graham dismissed uncomfortably. He returned to his laptop.

  "You seem pretty sure for a guy who doesn't even know his own probe can talk."

  "For the last time, Beemer, it does not talk," he snapped.

  "Oh, yeah? Well, if it doesn't talk, then why does it have a mouth?"

  When Graham looked up, his eyes were instantly drawn to the front of the probe. Just beneath the stationary eye of the top microcamera a hole had been punched in the heat-resistant plate. Beemer was pointing at it.

  Graham almost knocked over his chair, so quickly did he clamber to his feet. "What did you do to him?" he snarled, bounding to the side of the probe.

  The hole was only an inch and a half high and two inches wide. The metal around the edges seemed to puff out, forming a pair of crude metallic lips.

  "I didn't do anything," Beemer insisted.

  "Damn you, Beemer, do you have any idea what this is gonna cost me? A software glitch can be fixed like nothing, but these plates have to be manufactured individually."

  "I didn't do it, I swear," Beemer said, his voice growing troubled. "I just noticed it there." Ordinarily, Pete Graham wouldn't have believed Beemer in a million years. However, something odd suddenly happened. When he glanced back at the probe, the metal mouth was closed.

  "What the hell?" Graham asked.

  Stepping closer, he peered at the spot where the opening had been. It was now a flat line. The lip buds were still visible. Soft ridges in an otherwise smooth surface. And as Pete Graham watched in growing astonishment, the mouth creaked open once more. Graham jumped back.

  Until now Clark Beemer had assumed that everyone but him knew about the voice. He figured, as usual, that he was the butt of some geek joke. Sensing now that something was indeed wrong, he ducked behind Graham, grabbing the scientist's arm.

  "What is it?" he asked fearfully.

  "I don't know," Graham shot back.

  His eyes were wide as he watched the artificial mouth open and close.

  It was the most surreal moment of Pete Graham's young life. The newly formed mouth was testing, trying to work out kinks. It squeaked as it flexed.

  His eyes wide, Beemer's fingers digging into his bicep, Graham couldn't help but think of the rusted-shut Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The scientist couldn't think, couldn't run. He dared not even breathe.

  A pained groan that sounded like a piece of metal being torn apart rose up from the dark depths of the orifice.

  And the voice that had expressed regret for an inability to offer Clark Beemer a drink at the base of Popocatepetl rose once more from the mechanical throat. And it said, "Hello is all right."

  And when the impossible words issued from the cold, cybernetic belly of the probe he had built, Pete Graham's thudding heart froze in his chest.

  Chapter 4

  Remo had parked his car on a side street near the Westchester Golf Club. By the time he reached the leased Ford Explorer, the first shrill sounds of approaching police sirens were carrying across the most distant fairway.

  A faint smile brushed his thin lips as he slipped behind the wheel.

  He took a left off the dead end. The tidy residential street ran parallel to the golf course.

  The route was familiar. He soaked in the scenery with a melancholy twinge.

  The house he'd recently lost had actually been his second real home. His first full-time residence had been here, on this very street.

  It was a cruel quirk of fate that had robbed him of each home. He, Remo Williams, orphan and perpetual outsider to the entire human race, could never have a normal home.

  His old house came up on the left.

  The new owners had made some changes to the simple, two-story Cape. Vinyl siding now covered the paint. Most of the shrubs near the front were gone.

  Children apparently lived there now, for the lawn was covered with plastic toys. Orange-and-yellow leaves formed a damp pile near a multicolored jungle gym.

  A knot formed in the pit of Remo's stomach when he saw the white picket fence that now enclosed the front yard. In the days when he used to dream of home and hearth and some semblance of a normal life, his mind's eye seemed always to surround that life with a tidy picket fence.

  But that wasn't his life and would never be. Remo drove on.

  Harold Smith's home was next door. The CURE director's battered station wagon had already been in the Folcroft Sanitarium parking lot when Remo left that morning, so he wasn't surprised to find that it wasn't in the driveway now.

  Smith's wife was out in the yard. The matronly woman was dressed in slacks and a big flannel shirt. She was wrangling wet leaves from beside the front step with a bamboo rake that seemed to be missing most of its prongs.

  Even Smith had a home. It might not be perfect and he might not spend much time there, but the fact remained it was there whenever he wanted it to be. All Remo had was a sackful of metaphorical lemons and a prophecy that his life was going to get worse before it got better. If it got better.

  The street ended abruptly at a busy intersection. "Maybe the worst of it's behind me," Remo muttered as he pulled out onto the cross street.

  Downtown Rye had evolved since Remo had first been drafted into CURE. Back in those days, though it was close to New York City, Rye had still retained some small-town charm. Not anymore. Over the decades the city had become a typically soulless suburb. Neatly washed brick buildings advertised law and accounting firms while whitewashed banks crowded the sidewalk. Remo counted thirty-seven sets of traffic lights on what had been the old Boston Post Road. A set of lights positioned every ten feet, all red, turned the main road into a parking lot. It took him fortyfive minutes to travel three city blocks.

  He was grateful when he finally escaped the busiest part of town. Suburban sprawl changed over to woods. Through a shower of gaily colored leaves, Remo caught glimpses of Long Island Sound. A few boats bobbed on the sun-dappled water.

  The familiar high wall of Folcroft appeared on his left. Remo followed it to the main gate. He drove past the guard shack with its sleeping uniformed guard and up the gravel drive of the sanitarium.

  Remo parked his car in the employee lot and headed for the side door.

  He sensed a pair of heartbeats in the stairwell even before he reached the door. When he pulled it open, one of the two men was already looking his way.

  The wizened Asian looked as old as the hills. Other than two tufts of yellowing white hair that sprouted above each ear, his age-speckled scalp was bald. His skin was like ancient parchment. The fine lines of delicate blue veins crisscrossed beneath the dry surface.

  Chiun, Master of Sinanju and Remo's teacher, clucked unhappily. As the door swung shut, the elderly Korean's youthful hazel eyes frowned disapproval at his pupil.

  A much younger man had been sitting on the bottom step near Chiun. He seemed startled at Remo's appearance. As Remo stepped inside, the young man scurried to his feet.

  "It was you, wasn't it?" Mark Howard asked without preamble.

  The assistant CURE director was in his late twenties and had a broad, corn-fed face with ruddy patches on each cheek. At the moment a sickly flush tainted his pale skin.

  "Guess good
news travels fast," Remo said blandly.

  "Oh, God, it was you," Howard said, sinking back to a sitting position on the staircase.

  "I plead the Fifth," Remo said dully. "You eat breakfast yet, Little Father?"

  When he tried to cross to the basement staircase, a bony hand pressed against his chest, holding him in place.

  "Stop, idiot," Chiun hissed.

  "Why?" Remo said, his face drooping into a scowl.

  "So I can hear you play Jiminy Cricket to Spanky here?" He nodded to Howard. The young man was still sitting on the stairs, one hand holding his queasy belly. "No, thanks."

  "You killed B.O. Anson," Mark Howard said weakly.

  "There is no sense in denying it, Remo," the Master of Sinanju charged, folding his long-nailed hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his purple day kimono. "Emperor Smith's oracles have already divined your guilt."

  "Guilt's a funny thing," Remo said. "Smith's computers say I'm guilty-I say I was chipping golf balls in my hotel room in Chicago. We'll leave it to the jury to decide."

  Howard finally looked up. Dull shock filled his tired eyes. "How could you?" he asked.

  "Easy. Keep your legs apart, concentrate on the ball and make the club an extension of your own arm."

  "As usual, you are an audience of one for your own pathetic attempts at humor," Chiun said. "Now make things easier for your poor old dying father and apologize for slaying the ballfooter."

  "What?" Remo said. "No way. I've had a crummy year, and I decided to give myself an early Christmas present. And don't try to get around me with that dying thing. You're as healthy as a horse."

  "No thanks to you," Chiun snipped.

  "Apologies are irrelevant," Howard said, pulling himself to his feet. "Dr. Smith wants to see you. He sent us to collect you as soon as you got back."

  Remo's face darkened. "Oh, c'mon," he groused.

  But Chiun was already turning away. "Come, Prince Mark," the old man said. Tucking his arm into the crook of Howard's elbow, he guided the much younger man up the stairs.

  With a deepening frown, Remo followed.

  "So how'd you know it was me?" Remo grumbled as they mounted the stairs.

  Howard pitched his voice low. "You know that the mainframes automatically flag all Sinanju-signature deaths. The news has already picked up on it. Given the circumstances, there's a feeding frenzy going on."