The Wrong Stuff td-125

by Warren Murphy

  Lights of joy sparked bright in Zipp Codwin's eyes. "But I will not," Mr. Gordons had finished.

  The colonel's heart fell. "Why in the name of hot holy hell not?" Zipp asked.

  "I have done so before," Mr. Gordons had replied. "To do so again would be uncreative."

  And that ended all discussion on the subject. Zipp had to settle for simple robberies.

  The past week's tests proved Gordons's mettle. Zipp Codwin had quickly decided that the nickel-and-dime stage was over. It was time to move on to bigger and better things.

  That morning, he'd sent Gordons out to find an armored truck. Any would do. As for the how, where and when, the android had been left to his own devices.

  When he saw the footage on the news, Zipp Codwin nearly had a stroke. There was Gordons-as big as life-crawling along the side of the armored car.

  Fortunately for NASA, Mr. Gordons had improved on the design of the probe he had assimilated. Gone was the awkwardness of a wind-up toy. Gordons had given Virgil a fluidity of motion that it had never had before: He had also used a spider he had seen spinning a web in the lab as a template to remake his image. The Virgil probe was no longer merely reminiscent of a spider; it looked like the real dang thing. Furry legs, smooth body and all.

  Zipp had been a little worried that the armored car stolen so publicly was making a beeline straight for him, but he soon found that Gordons had made some cosmetic alterations en route from Orlando. He learned this when he drove back from lunch and found a Mr. Coney ice-cream truck parked in his space.

  "What the hell is this?" Zipp bellowed when he saw the ice-cream truck. It had an open counter with pictures of sundaes and cones painted on the side. There was no driver. "Security!" he howled. "There's a goddamn frozen-pudding peddler parked in my space!"

  "Keep quiet," advised a voice that seemed to come from somewhere in the truck.

  Zipp's face turned purple. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to, boy!" he screamed. He stuck his head in the open window. There was no one in the cab.

  "I am talking to a human whose neck I will snap if he does not quiet down," said the now familiar voice.

  It seemed to be coming from the dashboard. When Zipp looked closer he saw that, instead of a volume control knob for the stereo, there was an eye. It was looking at him.

  "Oh," said Zipp, finally realizing to whom he was talking.

  He ushered the truck to the building that housed Pete Graham's lab. There the Virgil probe detached itself from the vehicle. When it crawled up out of the open door in the back, Zipp Codwin's eyes grew wide. The floor of the truck was filled with sacks of money.

  Operating capital. Gordons had gotten his first big score for NASA. And he'd managed to do it under the noses of every law-enforcement official in central Florida.

  Suddenly, the possibilities that had been present in the earliest days of the space agency flooded back. In that moment images of lunar cities and Martian colonies and starships exploded bright and beautiful in Zipp Codwin's retired Air Force brain.

  "Son," he said to the probe that stood patiently beside him, "if I wasn't so dang-blasted sure the current Mrs. Codwin would rake me over the coals in the settlement, I'd ditch her saggy old behind and hitch up with you!"

  And, unable to keep his exuberance in check, he flung his powerful arms around the torso of the Virgil probe.

  FOR SECURITY REASONS Colonel Codwin had kept knowledge of Mr. Gordons limited to a tight inner circle.

  Graham's team, which had flown Virgil to and from Mexico, wasn't a problem. As far as they were concerned, its return from the depths of Popocatepetl had been nothing more than a bizarre malfunction. The only men other than Zipp himself aware of the probe's true nature were Dr. Graham himself and the PR guy, Clark Beemer.

  When the time came to haul the money out of the ice-cream truck that had once been a SecureCo armored car, Graham and Beemer were conscripted to do the honors.

  "I don't know if it's such a good idea to just stack it here," Pete Graham ventured. Panting, he dropped the last dirty sack onto the pile.

  There was dried blood on the exterior of the bag. Graham tried not to think about how it got there. "This is NASA, boy," Zipp Codwin dismissed. He was sitting on a mound of sacks. Around his ankles he had dumped a pile of bills. "No one's gonna suspect we're involved in anything dirty. Hell, most folks'd probably be surprised to find out we were still around."

  The Virgil probe was back in the corner of the room. The three men paid it no attention while they worked.

  "I don't know," Beemer said worriedly. He used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead. "This last robbery made a big splash on the news. Somebody might figure out that the spider doing all the stealing is ours. And if it does get out, I'm not sure we can spin our way out of it."

  His voiced concern was met with a metallic shriek from behind them. All three men whipped around. The Virgil probe was reaching up to the ceiling with one of its slender spider legs. It had just ripped a security camera from the wall. The device tore free in a spray of bright sparks.

  "Hush up, ya dagburn fool," Zipp hissed. "You're pissing him off." He rubbed the purple bruises on his neck, remnants of the last time Gordons had gotten upset.

  But Virgil didn't seem to be paying attention to them. It was more concerned with the camera in its claw.

  "What are you doing?" Graham asked.

  "This one is correct," Mr. Gordons said. "I am incomplete. I have been concealing myself in a shape not adequate to camouflage. To maximize my survival I must adopt a form more inconspicuous."

  The leg expanded until it enveloped the small camera. There was a grinding of metal during which some small parts fell to the floor. What remained when he was through, Mr. Gordons pressed to his face.

  When he removed his makeshift hand, a second eye had joined the first. Both eyes looked at the three NASA men.

  "Survive ...survive ...maximize survival...."

  As he spoke, all eight legs folded up underneath the Virgil probe. Its torso floated to the floor like a metallic soap bubble. When it landed, the legs were immediately absorbed into the main body. At the same time, the body itself began to compress, collapsing in on itself.

  It looked for all the world as if the probe were melting.

  "How can he do that?" Beemer asked in wonder. "Virgil's got to be five times bigger than that."

  "If you're measuring the actual distance from leg tip to leg tip and top to bottom, it's more like ten times," Pete Graham whispered excitedly. "But the components of Virgil are light and spread thin. He can somehow manipulate those components into a more compact unit. The mass remains the same. It's just formed into a different shape."

  Zipp Codwin looked at the shrinking form of Mr. Gordons. "So it's like he's crushing the Virgil in one of those car compressors they have at junkyards?"

  Graham nodded tightly. He was staring in rapt attention at the amazing transformation taking place before them.

  It was obvious now what Gordons was doing. The shape had begun to grow familiar. Arms, legs. The head still remained as a command unit above the newly re-formed torso.

  When Mr. Gordons stood a moment later, he was completely remade. Circuits blinked at strategic points around the metal frame. Clusters of multicolored wires were visible at all the major joints. But in spite of the high-tech gloss, the form he had taken on was clearly recognizable.

  "My God," Clark Beemer murmured.

  "Dang if he don't look human," Zipp breathed.

  "Thank you," Mr. Gordons replied. "It is the optimum manner in which to conceal myself among you. According to my projections the human population should be well in excess of six billion by this time. This form will help me to blend in with greater success. In addition to this, my experience has taught me that my enemies have a lower degree of success recognizing me when I have assumed the human form."

  When he was through talking, he brought up his arms.

  The metallic hands seemed to shudde
r. And before their eyes, the fingers on each of the android's hands compressed into single units. The new hands flattened and lengthened until they had grown into familiar shapes.

  "There was an element of my program that once allowed for the incorporation of organic material," Mr. Gordons explained. "That has been damaged irreparably."

  Pete Graham liked the sound of that. Especially given the fact that Mr. Gordons now seemed to have two long, curving knives in place of hands.

  Near the stacks of money was a sofa. The android turned his attention to it now.

  It was an old leather number that had been kicking around the lab for years. When he had first taken over this NASA lab, it reminded Pete Graham of the couch he'd had back at his dorm at MIT. He had fought off multiple attempts by the staff to remove it.

  Mr. Gordons leaned into the sofa with his hands. The blades became blurs. Slicing turned to tearing, and before Pete knew what had happened his old sofa had been stripped of every last bit of leather. It sat on the floor like a skinned fish, all stuffing and springs.

  When he stood, Mr. Gordons's hands had resumed their human shape. In them were clasped the strips of leather.

  As the three men watched, Gordons folded his hands over his chest, pressing the upholstery to his body. With a soft hiss the leather disappeared.

  Just like that. Disappeared. Absorbed into the metal frame like water into a paper towel.

  "What the ding-dang?" Zipp said. "How did he-?"

  Before he could complete the thought, the leather reappeared.

  It showed up first on the forearms. Bleeding up from below the metal surface. Digested and assimilated, it was softer now. A perfect carbon copy of human skin. It had lost its faded brown, resurfacing in a bland baby pink.

  Rapidly, the thighs and torso were covered. The rest of the arms, legs, hands and feet followed. Last was the head.

  When the metamorphosis was complete, Mr. Gordons stood before the three NASA men, naked and whole.

  "Oh my..." whispered Clark Beemer.

  Zipp Codwin's mouth hung open wide. "How-how does he have hair?" he asked Pete Graham.

  Mr. Gordons answered for the scientist. "Threads contained within the sofa material provided adequate source material." A mechanical facsimile of a human hand brushed back the sandy blond hair. "It is quite lifelike. I require clothing to complete my disguise. Yours will suffice."

  He pointed at Clark Beemer. The public-relations man didn't even argue. Terrified eyes focused squarely on the man before him, he began stripping off his clothes. He handed them to the android. Gordons put them on.

  "I am now fully functional," Mr. Gordons said once he was dressed. "It is time."

  There was a long pause during which none of the men said a thing. It was Zipp Codwin who finally realized that Gordons expected something of them.

  "Um, time for what?" he asked. He had grown strangely comfortable talking to Gordons in his spider form. This human thing was going to take some getting used to.

  "To implement your plan," Gordons said in his smooth, mechanical voice.

  Zipp glanced at Beemer and Graham. "My, um, plan?"

  "Please do not tell me that you have not developed a plan of attack I might use against my enemies," Mr. Gordons said. "I do not wish to have to rip your medulla oblongata from your skull as an example." His lips were parted in something that was almost but not quite a smile.

  "Whoa, there, son," Zipp said, hastily throwing up his hands. "I gotcha. Wrong wavelength before. Plan. You want the plan I've come up with for you. Well, about that. See, I haven't had the time to fully flesh it out."

  "You have had six days, eight hours and twelve minutes in which to complete your task," Mr. Gordons said. "In the meantime I have done all that you wish. I have stolen one million, thirty-four thousand, seven hundred eighty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents for you to use as you wish."

  "For science," Zipp stressed, lest anyone get the impression that he was in this for personal gain.

  "How you make use of it is irrelevant. I have held up my end of our bargain. It is time for you to reciprocate."

  Zipp shot a look at Graham. "Help me out here," he whispered sharply.

  Graham jumped. "Me? Oh, ah, well..." His eyes darted around the room as he tried to come up with an answer Mr. Gordons would find acceptable. "Maybe you don't have to face these enemies at all. You're just looking for safety. To survive. We could, um, send you to someplace where you're sure to be safe. You-that is, the Virgil probe-are designed to survive in an inhospitable alien climate. If we send you to Mars or a Jovian moon you'd be safe."

  "Are you out of your mind?" Zipp Codwin snapped, smacking Graham on the back of the head. "I need him."

  "Negative," Mr. Gordons said to Graham. "Mars will likely be inhabited by humans within the next three hundred years. It is possible that the descendants of my enemies will come there. While colonization of Jupiter's moons is unlikely, they are not suitable to my needs. I am a mechanical being. Were I damaged somehow, the parts to repair me would not be available on an uninhabited world. Even if replacement parts were sent with me, they would not last long enough, since it is not possible at the present time to ship supplies from this planet on such a vast scale. Remember, my life span is far greater than that of humans."

  "Life span?" Beemer asked. He was shivering in his underwear.

  "I am self-aware," Gordons said. "Therefore I live." His mechanical voice turned even more cold as he looked back to Zipp Codwin. "What is your plan?"

  Zipp gulped. "It's such a good plan, I don't want to ruin it by blurting it out too soon," he dodged. "Gimme another day to think. Just one more. Is that good for you?"

  Gordons's blue eyes were ice.

  "You had better think fast," he warned. "During each of the robberies you have involved me in I left a small piece of the Virgil probe. When discovered, the fragments will be traceable back to NASA. As a result of my very creative plan you will soon have enemies like mine. In your case it will be the authorities. If you do not aid me, I will leave you and this agency you revere at their mercy."

  Zipp Codwin felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. The room spun around him. "Not NASA!" he gasped. If it was possible for an android to display smugness, Mr. Gordons did so now.

  "I calculated an eighty-three percent probability that the agency for which you work was more important to you than your own life," Gordons said. "I am pleased to know that I was correct."

  "You were correct, dammit," Zipp snapped. "Okay, okay. These enemies you keep blabbing about. Who are they and where are they?"

  "Some of my memory degraded while I was inactive. I do not know where they are located, but their names are Remo and Chiun. They are practitioners of an ancient martial art that, as far as I have been able to ascertain, predates and surpasses all others. These two men are unlike any I have ever encountered and have caused me to cease functioning at full capacity six times before. I would further caution you that they will most likely be alerted to the participation of the Virgil probe in your illegal activities not long after the normal civilian authorities uncover the clues I have left. This, Administrator Zipp Codwin of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, makes it all the more imperative that you help me sooner rather than later. That is, assuming you wish to keep this agency from being dismantled by the United States government piece by piece."

  And with that, Mr. Gordons turned on his heel and walked from the room.

  The way he moved was unnerving. There was a deliberate, gliding slowness to his newly formed feet. No uncertainty, no experimentation. He just slid forward and was gone.

  When the door closed gently behind Mr. Gordons, a shell-shocked Colonel Codwin turned to Beemer and Graham.

  "Cold, calculating son of a bitch," Zipp muttered. "Hate to say it, but he's a man after my own damn heart."

  "What do we do?" Clark Beemer asked nervously. Zipp shook himself from his trance. He looked at Beemer.

  "First thing, go a
nd get some pants on," he said to the half-naked PR man. "For God's sake man, this is NASA." He took a deep breath, crossing his arms. "Second, we figure out how to help our friend Gordons kill those two pals of his. All in the name of good old-fashioned American interplanetary exploration, of course."

  Chapter 15

  Remo found a hotel near City Point, fifteen miles south of Yuletide. After calling Smith to give him the number, he and Chiun settled down in front of the TV.

  Smith had been right. The cable news outlets seemed to have put the footage of the creature's attack on the SecureCo armored car on an endless loop of tape. The sequence repeated ceaselessly as somberfaced newscasters commented on it in deeply serious voices.

  The head of the armored-car company was interviewed. Various law-enforcement officials and entomologists were on hand to offer their perspectives. Even the governor of Florida was questioned about the spider at a statehouse press conference.

  One cable station even hauled out a pair of Hollywood producers who a few years before had made a film about a giant mutated lizard that destroyed New York City.

  Everyone seemed to be interviewing everyone else and, from what Remo could see as day bled into the dark hours of night, no one knew anything.

  He hit the mute button.

  Remo didn't need to hear what they were saying. The footage-what there was of it-spoke for itself. For the twentieth time Remo watched as the massive spider scampered along the side of the SecureCo truck. As it worked to tear open the back door, its long legs were shielded by its body.

  The results of its efforts were evident soon enough. The door wrenched apart, and the huge arachnid scurried into the back through the wide opening.

  After this, the now out-of-focus camera bounced rapidly, following the path of the abandoned van. The van bounced off the jersey barrier and rolled out into the oncoming lanes of traffic. Just as the first speeding car crashed into it, the image cut out.

  Quietly, Remo clicked off the TV.

  Seated on the floor next to him, the Master of Sinanju had been studying the screen carefully. He seemed to be absorbing every movement of the creature as it crawled around the outside of the armored car.