Warren Murphy - The Sky is Falling

"That's it."

It was its beauty that alarmed Remo. He had seen great jewels and felt the fire that other men longed for, even though he had never longed for it. He remembered one of Chiun's early lessons. Like so many teachings then, he was not to understand it until much later. But Chiun had said that things in nature of great beauty were often the ones to watch most closely.

"The weak disguise themselves in dull colors of the ground. But the deadly flaunt themselves to attract victims."

"Yeah. What about a butterfly?" Remo had said.

"When you see the most beautiful butterfly in the world, stop. Do not touch. Touch nothing you are attracted to touch."

"Sounds like a dull life."

"Do you think I am talking about your entertainment?"

"Sure," Remo had said. "I don't know what you are talking about."

"Yes," Chiun had said. "You don't."

Years later, Remo had realized Chiun was teaching him how to think. Something was beautiful for a reason. Something was attractive for a reason. Often the most venomous things cloaked themselves in glory to attract their victims. Yet in the sky, what Remo saw was not something that intended its beauty as a lure, but the awesome indifference of the universe. It could end millions of lives without caring or even intending to, because in its basic atomic logic, life did not matter. Remo looked at the beautiful blue closing ring and thought of these things as the security officer kept repeating that the field he wanted was in front of him.

"Okay," said Remo to the car full of British security personnel. "Don't move."

"How can we?" said the Navy commander. His uniform had lost one of the fifteen medals he had earned by never going to sea. "I haven't felt my legs for an hour."

The field smelled of burning. This little patch of England was not green, but flecked with dead dried grass, pale white as though someone had left it in a desert for an afternoon. Several cages on metal tables held the blackened bodies of animals. Remo could smell the sweet sticky odor of burned flesh. Nothing moved in the cages. A few people in white coats stood around the tables, filling in forms. One of the white-coated workers gathered the dead grass. Another was packaging the earth into beakers and then sealing them in plastic. One of them banged his watch.

"It doesn't work," he said. He had a sharp British accent. It was a strange thing about that language that one could measure the class by the tones, as though on a calibrated scale of one to ten: the ten being royalty and the accent being muted; the one being cockney, its accent very strong like a sharp pepper sauce. The man complaining about his watch was a seven, his broad accent of the upper classes but with a trace of cockney whine.

"Hello," said Remo.

"Yes, what can I do for you?" said the man, shaking his watch. Several other technicians looked at their watches.

Two of them worked, three of them didn't. The man's face had the pale British look as though bleached of sunlight and joy. A face designed for drizzle and gloom, and possibly a shot of whiskey every so often to make it all bearable.

Even if he hadn't spoken with an accent, Remo would have known he was British. Americans would attend to a watch problem before dealing with any stranger.

"I am curious about this experiment. There might be some danger here, and I want to know what you're doing," said Remo.

"We have our licenses and permits, sir," said the technician.

"For what?" said Remo.

"For this experiment, sir."

"What exactly is it?"

"It is a limited, safe, controlled test of the effects of the sun without filtration by ozone. Now may I ask whom you are with?"

"Them," said Remo, nodding to the car filled with British security.

"Well, they certainly look impressive, but who are they?"

"Your security forces."

"Do they have identification of sorts? Sorry, but I must see identification."

Remo shrugged. He went back to the car and asked for everyone's identification. One of them, still groggy, handed up his wallet with money.

"This isn't a robbery," said Remo.

"I thought it was," said the dazed representative of the ultrasecret MI-12.

"No," said Remo, adding his clearance card to the other cards and plastic face-picture badges. He brought a handful of identifications back to the technician. The technician looked at the identifications and gasped at one of them.

"Gracious. You've got a staff officer in there."

"One of them," said Remo. "There is an intelligence guy there, too."

"Yes. Quite. So. I see," said the technician, giving back the identifications. Remo pocketed them in case he might need them again. "What would you like?" asked the technician.

"Who are you?"

"I am a technician from Pomfritt Laboratories of London," said the technician.

"What are you doing here? Precisely. What's going on?"

The man launched himself into a detailed explanation of fluorocarbon and the power of the sun, and the harnessing of the unfiltered rays of the sun and finding out in a "controlled"-he stressed "controlled "-atmosphere just what mankind could do with the sun's full power.

"Burn ourselves to cinders," said Remo, who understood perhaps half of what the technician was talking about. "Okay, what is doing it, and where is it?"

"A controlled fluorocarbon beam generator."

"Good," said Remo. "Where is that fluorocarbon ... thing?"

"At its base."

"Right. Where?" said Remo.

"I'm not sure, but as you can see, this experiment is marvelously controlled," said the technician. He gave his wristwatch a little tap again to get it going. It didn't.

"Why aren't you sure?" asked Remo.

"Because it's not our product. We're just testing it."

"Good. For whom?"

The technician gave Remo a name and an address. It was in America. This confirmed some of the data he had gotten from the intelligence people in the car. He returned to the car and asked for the telephone.

The number rang. Remo held the black telephone attached to a unit in the front of the car. He stood outside the driver's window. When he heard the crisp "Yes" from Smith, Remo said:

"I am still on an open line."

"Go ahead," said Smith. "What do you have?"

"I found the source of that thing that opens up the ozone layer."

"Good. Where?"

Remo gave him the name and address of the firm in America. "Do you want me to return and close in on them? Or do you want to do it yourself? You're there in America."

"Hold on," said Smith.

Remo smiled at the group of men in the back of the car. The colonel glowered back. The intelligence officer stared ahead glumly. In the field, the lab technicians were comparing watches. Remo whistled as he waited for Smith. "Okay," said Smith.

"Do you want to handle it there, or do we have enough time for me to fly back and do it right?"

"I want you to keep looking, Remo. Not only is there no such company as Sunorama of Buttesville, Arkansas, but there isn't even a Buttesville, Arkansas."

Remo returned to the laboratory technician and offered to fix the man's watch by running it through his ears and out through his nose if he didn't tell the truth.

"That's the name we have. We're participating in the experiment for Dr. O'Donnell. It's her company. That was the name she gave. Really."

Remo tended to believe the man. Most people told the truth when their dorsal root ganglion was compressed painfully into the sensory neuron along the spinal cord. Sometimes they would cry. Sometimes they would yell. But they always told the truth. This lab technician opened his mouth to yell when Remo allowed the pain to subside and thus enabled him to talk.

"Fine," said Remo. "Where is Dr. O'Donnell?"

"She left with a Russian-speaking guy," said the technician.