Warren Murphy: The Sky is Falling

She told them a story. She told them several stories. She got Reemer Bolt on the telephone. Bolt's voice cracked as he was trying to explain that everything was not lost.

Kathy told him to contact the lawyers of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. She told him to contact her banker. She told him how much money to wire. She told him to get her out of there. She told him the magic words: "Everything is going to be all right, Reemer."

"Of course, but how?"

"I am taking over," she said.

"Your project? Your responsibility?"

"Of course, Reemer."

"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said Reemer Bolt, realizing there was a way out of this mess.

Thus when the technicians started complaining later that day that Dr. D'Donnell was going to destroy the world, Reemer Bolt had little sympathy for them.

Kathy, returning on the first flight back east, had stormed into Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts and, without even a change of clothes, begun ordering the technicians around.

Bolt happily endorsed everything. But soon the technicians began sneaking out of the beam generator station with tales of what was going on.

"Mr. Bolt, did you know that she has placed a locked wide arc on the beam?"

"No. Frankly, I don't care," said Bolt. "It's Dr. O'Donnell's project, and what she does with it is her business. I tried to save it with marketing directions, but I don't know if I can do anything now."

Then another technician entered Reemer Bolt's office. "Did you know she is building a second beam generator?"

"Thank you for telling me," said Bolt, and promptly began preparing a memo from him to Kathy with another copy to the board of directors. That memo would suggest that they first make one beam generator feasible before they invest in another.

All the technicians came in on the next one:

"Did you know that she is doing a central eclipse with a locked perpendicular arc on the second generator?"

"No, I didn't," said Bolt with great thoughtfulness. "But I do resent your coming to me with tales about another officer of this corporation. Underhandedness is not the way Reemer Bolt likes to do business."

"Well, for one thing, if she turns on that second generator, none of us is going to be able to get out alive."

"What about the radiation suits?"

"They're only good for standing near it. And the arc she's going to set up for that second one can wipe out all life from here to Boston."

"Keep up the good work," said Bolt, who immediately set about establishing a Rhode Island branch of the corporation, something he was going to have to do before she turned on the second beam.

In the laboratories Kathy O'Donnell heard all the complaints. The technicians' objections became increasingly shrill. And she cared not a whit for any of these people. She hardly even heard them. She didn't even enjoy the obvious suffering of one of the technicians as he described the horror she could inflict on the world with these changes and additions to the program.

Kathy O'Donnell did not care. Remo had left her.

Everyone was going to pay for it, especially Remo.

Chapter 17

Ironically, it was Chiun's understanding of Russia that might get Remo killed. Smith had no choice. That was the horror of these great events. Everyone was really helpless to do anything but try to avoid the megadeaths they all faced.

Smith had wanted Chiun to penetrate Russia. Even now he would rather have launched Chiun into Russia than Remo. But Remo was all he had. No one knew where Chiun was or what he was doing. Smith reviewed what Chiun knew about Russia. Smith had made the correct move. The rest of the government was wrong.

Chiun, in some strange way, read the Russians like children read comic books. It was all clear to him. Every move that seemed baffling and threatening to the West was like a colorful, unmistakably simple design to Chiun.

"Russia is not an enigma wrapped in a riddle. You are the enigma wrapped in the riddle so that simple imperial logic seems strange." Smith rarely understood the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun, of course, did not approve of wars, cold or warm, because the art of the assassin in such a conflict was always replaced by hordes of amateurs. Wars were also unjust, especially the modern ones among conscripts, because "your eighteen year olds die instead of your kings and generals." The implication was that if an assassin were hired instead of an army, justice, not mass murder, would be done.

What Chiun had seen so simply, and what had at last explained that the world had little time left, was the Russian manner of fighting. He had explained it in terms of ying and yang, fear and not-fear, strength and not-strength. It was, in brief, Oriental mishmash. Except Chiun always seemed to be able to tell what Russia would do when he was asked.

So Smith himself had taken all Chiun's ideas on Russia and translated them into mathematics, a subject he knew well. It was called the Russian mode. He had done it for himself, and had once offered it to the government but was refused. Frankly, Smith couldn't blame them because many of the terms to feed into the formula were things like "face" and "spine."

"Face" was what the Russians showed you and "spine" was what they were really doing. As in the body, the spine showed where everything was really going. The face could look anywhere. But the spine was where a person was. And so when this latest incident had begun, Smith had fed the moves of the "face" into the Russian mode designed from Chiun's mystical formulas. They actually weren't so mystical if you read everything as a never-ending fight for life. Sometimes the Russians were stupid. But more often than not they were brilliant.

It was Chiun's formula that had first suggested a possible link between the opening of the ozone shield and the building of the irresponsibly dangerous new missiles. The link was fear. And every move America made only worsened that fear, because the Russians believed, had to believe, according to Chiun's explanation, that America had a weapon that could easily destroy them and was planning to use it.

Chiun's formula said that when the Russians built their first-strike missiles they already felt that all other armor might be or was definitely useless.

The trust of mutual terror that had kept the countries in a nuclear stalemate had been broken because Russia was sure that America was about to win it all. That's where Russia's spine really was.

The face showed hostility. The spine showed fear. When the American special negotiator went to Russia with a gift of showing defenses as food faith, it had only confirmed that America had something so strong it would make ordinary Russian missiles useless. Spine.

When Russia invited the special negotiator back, it wanted to show peace by its willingness now to share the reports on the damage done to Russian missiles by exposure of electronics to unfiltered sun. The face was reasonable. The spine, according to Chiun's formula, showed they had really decided on war.

All of this became ice clear with the last Russian move, the suddenly reasonable face after hostility. The last Russian move unmistakably completed the entire formula. They were going to use those new missiles soon. A day maybe, two days, and they would be on their way.

There was no way to explain this to a harried President because the unmathematical translation was that after strong bitterness, sudden sweet was the sign of the steel spine. America could not launch a nuclear war because Smith had seen a computer translate a mathematical formula back into a term called "steel spine."

But if there was hopelessness on one hand, there was a chance on the other. If Chiun's understanding was correct, and Smith was sure it was, there was one way to show Russia that opening the ozone shield was not an American weapon.