Warren Murphy: Scorched Earth

"We weren't having a conversation until I walked in."

"And I was enjoying peace of mind until that moment. But since you are my adopted son and we are related through circuitous and convoluted ways, I will ignore this and listen to your explanations, although I have already judged them the workings of a possibly demented mind."

"By 'date,' I mean going out with a woman."

This lifted Chiun's wizened face, touching its wrinkles with startled interest. "You have met a woman?"

"Not yet. But I will."

"How do you know this?"

"Because I'm going to keep my eyes open for a woman to take out on New Year's Eve."

The Master of Sinanju stirred on his round reed floor mat. Only a knowledgeable anthropologist would recognize him as a member of the Altaic family, which included Turks, Mongols and Koreans. Chiun was Korean. Born late in the last century, he had youthful hazel eyes that bespoke a vitality that virtually guaranteed he would see the next. There was almost no hair on the smooth egg that was his skull. Two cloudlike puffs tickled the tops of his ears. A wisp of a beard curled from his parchment chin. He was the last Korean Master of Sinanju, head of the House of Sinanju, a lineage of assassins who protected pharaohs and popes, caliphs and czars, rulers of all kinds, in an unbroken chain that stretched back to the thin mists of early human civilization.

"I do not understand this concept, Remo," he said, shifting his golden kimono, whose silken sleeves in his lap formed a tunnel that shielded his hands from view. "Explain it to me."

"New Year's?"

"No. Not that. I fully understand the Western dating errors that insist the year begin in the dead of winter when all sane calendars start with the first blooming promise of spring. What is this other dating?"

"You take a woman out and show her a good time."

"Why?"

Remo growled, "Because you like her and she likes you."

"What then?"

"Depends. Sometimes you date no more. Other times you date forever more."

"You marry?"

"That sometimes happens," Remo admitted.

"You are in need of a wife?" asked Chiun, his voice thinning.

"Not me. I just want to slip into a normal life-style for a change. See how it feels."

"So you will take out a woman you do not know, showering her with undeserved gifts and attention and possibly feeding her?"

"Something like that."

"How do you know this woman will be suitable if you have not yet beheld her conniving face?"

"I won't date anyone who isn't suitable."

"This is a strange concept. If you desire a woman, why not take one?"

"I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about companionship."

"Leading to what?"

"Sex, I guess."

"Aha!" Chiun crowed. "So why do you not dispense with this dating hysteria and take a woman you like, enjoy her for an evening, possibly two if she possesses sturdy bones, abandon her to the winds of chance and then resume your normal existence?"

"If I want sex, there are willing stewardesses galore."

"Then I leave you to your stewardesses, just as you leave me to my meditations," said Chiun, his gaze going to one of the big square windows that looked out over the seaside town of Quincy, Massachusetts.

"I don't want a stewardess. They just want to climb my tree. I want a woman I can talk to. One who understands me."

"You can talk to me. I understand your unfathomable ways. "

"You're not a woman."

"I am wiser than a woman. I have taught you more than any woman could. What disease has attacked your weak mind that you would seek out a woman for companionship and wisdom, women being notorious for their utter lack of those qualities?"

Remo started pacing the square room. "Look, I'm an assassin. I can live with it. But I'd like to do something more with my spare time than parry with you and exercise."

"You sleep?"

"Yes."

"You eat?"

"Yes."

"You have me in your life?"

"Always."

"Therefore, your days are full and rich, and your nights serene. What would a woman bring to them?"

"I'll let you know after I start dating," Remo growled.

"If you seek a wife, I will help you."

"I don't seek a wife."

"If you seek a woman, I will leave the sordid details to you."

"Thanks. Appreciate it," Remo said dryly.

At that point, the telephone on the ironwood taboret rang.

Remo grabbed it.

"Remo." It was Harold Smith. He spoke Remo's name with the same warmth he would put into the phrase "Check, please."

Remo returned the touching sentiment in kind. "Smith."

"I have been asked by the President to look into the BioBubble event."

"Why bother? Everyone knows it's a scam."

"Not that aspect of it. The BioBubble was destroyed earlier this evening."

"By what? Cockroach infestation?"

"No. An unknown power that melted it into sticky glass and slag steel."

Remo blinked. "What would cause that kind of meltdown?"

"That is for you and Chiun to discover. Start with the BioBubble founders."

"Isn't this more the FBI's meat?"

"The FBI is reluctant. And there is some urgency here."

"What kind of urgency?"

"Dr. Cosmo Pagan is telling the media that extraterrestrials may be behind the BioBubble's collapse."

"Who would believe that crap?" asked Remo.

"As much as fifty percent of the American people."

"Where did you get that figure?"

"That is the number of Americans who believe in UFOs, according to polls. And once Pagan's views are widely disseminated by the media, it could be the start of a nationwide panic."

"Oh," said Remo. "I guess we go to Arizona."

"Be discreet."

"I'll leave my Spock ears behind," said Remo, hanging up. He turned to Chiun.

"You heard?" he asked.

"Yes. But I did not understand."

"There's a place out west where they've duplicated every environment on earth-desert, prairie, rain forest-under sealed glass to study ourselves."

Chiun cocked his head to one side. "Yes?"

"Something melted it flat."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Yes. Why should something so useless take up precious space? Are there not too many people already? Do Americans not dwell too close together and without proper spacing between their houses?"

"There's plenty of room out in Arizona."

"And now there is more," said Chiun.

With that, the Master of Sinanju lifted himself from his lotus position on the floor. He came to his black-sandaled feet like an expanding genie of gold and emerald, the silken folds of his traditional kimono unfolding like tired origami. His hands, emerging from their sleeves, revealed long curved nails, one of which was capped by what might have been a jade thimble.

"Smith said to start at ground zero, so that's where we're going," Remo said.

"Perhaps while we are in Arizona, we will visit your ne'er-do-well relatives," Chiun suggested.

Remo winced. "We're on assignment."

"It may be that our work will take us to the place where your esteemed father dwells."

"Don't count on it. I don't intend to stay in Arizona any longer than I absolutely have to."

"Why not?"

"Because this is a dippy assignment."

"This is new?" asked the Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 5

No one had ever seen anything like it. No one had ever heard of anything like it.

Project head Amos Bulla walked around the still-warm zone of glazed, brownish glass that surrounded the defunct BioBubble. The striated red sandstone hills of Dodona, Arizona, cooked in the near distance, like Mars without impact craters.

"What could have done this? What the hell could have done this thing?" he was saying over and over again.

"Whatever it was, it produced better than 1600 degrees centigrade of heat," said the planetary geologist from the US Geological Survey in nearby Flagstaff.