Warren Murphy: Lords of the Earth

"This the two-hundred-megabyte hard disk?" Remo asked.

They both nodded. Their eyes were wide and their heads moved as stiffly as if their necks were petrified wood.

"That's it, huh?" confirmed Remo. He remembered Smith's computers at Folcroft, taking up most of a basement, and he didn't understand how anything of value could be contained in the small gray box.

The men nodded again.

"You make any backups?" Remo asked. He had been told to ask that and find the backups if they had made any.

"No," said both men in unison.

Remo grabbed one by the left pinky and pressed the finger backward with increasing pain.

"In the bathroom," the man gasped.

"What's in the bathroom?"

"Soft disks. Backups."

"Show me," said Remo. Both men went to a white door around the corner from the fireplace. When they opened it, Remo saw thousands of thin, recordlike disks.

"Is that it?" Remo said.

"You couldn't be from that place if you don't recognize a floppy disk," said the more aggressive of the two men. He wore a flared gray suit and a striped tie. The other wore a dark blue suit and plain white shirt with all the joy of someone rehearsing for his own funeral.

"I'm from that place," Remo said.

In his pocket was something he was supposed to use now. It was a small device that looked like a cigarette lighter but had no flame. It was black and metallic and had a button he was supposed to press. He pressed and the light in the living room flickered strangely.

"He's from that place," said the man in the flared suit. "He erased everything with a projected magnetic field."

"Is that what I did?" Remo asked.

"What are you going to use on the hard disk? It's got a platinum shell five times harder than steel."

"Five times, you say?" The men stared, stunned, at what they saw. It appeared as if the thin man in the dark shirt and trousers just slapped the two sides of the super-strong metal box, not hard, not even fast, as if he were giving it a love tap. With a crack, the shell shattered and the insides were exposed, shining purple.

Remo had been told that the insides, the hard disk, was vulnerable even to a nudge because of its incredible closeness to some sort of internal reading device. A tap would disable it. He gave it a punch, and a shower of glittery material sprayed the room.

The two men now realized that their own door's protective thickness prevented their bodyguards from hearing them.

"That it?" asked the bolder man. He had a small pistol he had been carrying since that first day when his computers had somehow been switched into the mind of the master computer that had monitored the dark side of America for so long.

"No," Remo said. "Two more things."

"What?" said the man. He had his hand on the pistol. He would put a shot right into the thin man's dark shirt. He would not aim for the head. Nothing fancy. A simple bullet in the chest, then unload the gun into the head and run. That was his plan. Unfortunately, it required an operating brain to carry it out and his was suddenly in the back part of the fireplace.

The other man passed out and never recovered, since his spinal column had been neatly severed. Neither of them had seen Remo's hand move for the very simple reason that they weren't supposed to.

Remo looked around. "Hard disk, backup," he mumbled to himself. "Hard disk, backup: That's it. I think I got it."

He left by the dumbwaiter. Outside, in the alley next to the elegant Back Bay brownstone, an armed guard gave him a hard stare. Remo smiled. The guard asked him what he was doing coming out of the building.

Remo tried to think of an answer. He didn't really have a good one so he deposited the guard and his gun in a nearby garbage container called a Dempsey Dumpster.

Had he missed anything? Hard disk, backup. That's what he was supposed to destroy. He was sure of it. Maybe.

He did not like the world of computers.

He liked it even less when he arrived at a small resort off the South Carolina coast. Several wood bungalows faced the calm Altantic, lapping against sand and grass. The old wooden steps of the bungalow made no sound as he moved lightly up them. The air was salty and good. Remo whistled softly, but once inside, he stopped. An ugly glass screen atop a keyboard was staring at him. Someone had brought a computer into the bungalow.

Sitting in a chair facing the sea was a frail wisp of a man in a subdued maroon kimono with gold dragons dancing around a golden sunburst. At the sides of his head, gentle fluffs of hair floated like wool grass in a breeze. Two parchment-frail hands with delicate fingers and long graceful fingernails rested peacefully at his side.

"Who brought that thing in here?" asked Remo, pointing to the computer near the front door.

"It makes my heart sing at the joy of your return," said the old man, Chiun, Master of Sinanju.

"I'm sorry, Little Father," said Remo. "I just hate computers and machines and things that don't go bump in the night."

"That is no excuse to greet me with such irreverence," Chiun snapped.

"Sorry," said Remo.

He walked around behind the computer and saw a body lying on the floor. There was an open attache case next to it.

"What's this all about?" Remo asked. He saw a brochure for a computer inside the attache case. "What?" Chiun asked mildly.

"This body. Did you have some trouble with the computer?" Remo asked.

"I did not. I am not a computer illiterate."

"Then what's this corpse doing here?"

"He had trouble with the computer," Chiun explained.

"It up and killed him?"

"He's dead, isn't he?" said Chiun.

"I am not getting rid of this body," Remo said. Chiun was silent. Had he asked Remo to get rid of the body? Had he done anything this day, this poor sunlit day where the world had little joy for him, but attempt to be reasonable and fair with this highly unfair world? What had he ever asked from the world? He wanted peace. He wanted only a small dollop of fairness and a chance to enjoy whatever the sun might bring. In return for giving Remo the awesome secrets of Sinanju, Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, received no gratitude but hostile questions about some worthless computer salesman who had died because he had failed with the computer.

Through the years, he thought with bitterness, he had given Remo what no other white man had been given. He had given him the power of Sinanju, the sun source of all the martial arts, from which had come the lesser rays that even whites had mastered: karate, tae kwando, judo, and all the other weak movings of the body.

And for giving this to Remo, for training him to masterhood, Chiun had received nothing, as always. But he was determined this morning not to allow this to ruin the day. He would accept as a fact that some things, some defects of character, could not be overcome, no matter how perfect and wondrous the training or the trainer. Chiun was determined to let Remo's rudeness pass until he realized that Remo was going to let it pass also, and then he had no choice but to bring up the ingratitude, the rudeness, the insensitivity, and all the other things he hadn't wanted to mention.

"I'm not cleaning up this body," Remo said. "I don't ask you to take care of my bodies, so please don't ask me to take care of yours."

"This one is not mine," said Chiun. "But I realize there are some things that can never be explained to one with a vicious heart."

"Since when do I have a vicious heart, Little Father?" Remo asked.

"You have always had a vicious heart."

"I'm used to 'ungrateful,' but not 'vicious.' "

"Does it bother you?" Chiun asked. There was the hint of a smile on his calm Oriental face. "No," Remo said.

The hint of a smile vanished. "I will think of something else," Chiun promised.