Warren Murphy: Lords of the Earth

"My lips are sealed," Myron said.

"How about you?" Remo said, turning to Anselmo. Before Anselmo could answer, Chiun said, "Remo, I wish you would conduct this conversation somewhere else. However, for disturbing my scroll, the ugly one belongs to me."

"Ugly one? Ugly one?" Anselmo shouted. "Is he talking about me?" he demanded of Remo.

Remo looked at Myron, then glanced at himself in a mirror. " 'Ugly one' sure sounds like you," he said.

"I'll deal with you next," Anselmo said. He stomped over to Chiun, who seemed to rise from the floor like a puff of smoke from a dying fire.

"You gotta learn, old man, not to go insulting people."

"Your face insults people," Chiun said.

Anselmo growled, drew back a big fist, and cocked it menacingly.

"Hey, Anselmo. Leave the old guy alone," Myron said.

"Good move, Myron," Remo said.

"Screw him," said Anselmo. He started the fist forward toward Chiun's frail delicate face. It never reached the target.

First Anselmo felt himself being lifted silently upward. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the old gook was lifting him, but he had no time to think about that, because as he descended he felt something ram into his kidneys, turning them into jelly. He wanted to howl, but something that felt like a cinder block severed his windpipe in one swat. Anselmo tried to gasp for air, as he realized that his bones were somehow being mashed. His eyes were still open and he saw his trousers being tied into a knot, and with numb shock he realized that his legs were still inside them. Inside his chest was a terrible pain. Anselmo thought he must be having a heart attack. It felt as if a powerful hand were clasping at the pumping organ inside his chest, squeezing the life from it. Then he saw that there was a frail yellow hand doing just that. He went into the void slowly, screaming noiselessly about a grave injustice that had been done to him, because he understood in the moment of his death that Waldron Perriweather had, all along, known he was going to die, and had planned it that way.

"Good-bye, Anselmo," Remo said. He turned back to Myron. "Where's Perriweather?" he asked. Myron looked in shock at Anselmo's body, lumped on the floor, then looked back at Remo.

"He was in the Plaza in New York," Myron said.

"And all he wanted was this fly delivered?" Remo said.

"That's right."

"Remo, that one tried to be kind to me," Chiun said. "Return the favor."

"I will, Little Father. Good-bye, Myron," Rerno said.

The big man didn't feel a thing.

"Kind of overdid it, didn't you?" Remo said, looking at the human pretzel that had been Anselmo Bossiloni.

"Do not speak to me," Chiun said, turning his back on Remo. He picked up the flattened piece of parchment and brushed heel marks from it. "All I ask is for quiet and all I get is aggravation and conversation. Dull conversation."

"Sorry, Chiun. I had questions to ask."

Chiun again rose to his feet. "It is obvious that as long as you live I will get no peace."

He walked across the room toward the laboratory table.

"I wanted to know what the fly was about," Remo said.

"It's from Perriweather, it must mean something." Chiun was peeking under the handkerchief at the cube.

"The fly," Remo said. "It's got to be the key."

"Find another key," Chiun said, plunking the cube into a wastebasket.

"What do you mean? What'd you do that for?"

"Because this fly is dead," Chiun said and walked from the room.

Chapter 19

They were in the basement room in Folcroft Sanitarium, where a small laboratory had been set up by Smith for Barry Schweid. Through the walls, Remo could hear the faint hum of the cooling system in the rooms that housed Folcroft's giant computers.

Chiun made it a point to keep his back to Remo and Remo just sighed and folded his arms and pretended to look interested in what Barry Schweid was doing.

The little fat man was in his glory. He pranced around the black lab table and whooped. He gestured ecstatically toward the dissected speck beneath his powerful microscope.

"It's fantastic, I tell you. Fantastic," Barry squealed in his perennially adolescent soprano. "You say somebody just gave you this."

"Just like Santa Claus," Remo said.

"Amazing," Barry said. "That someone would give a perfect stranger a gift of this magnitude."

Chiun snorted. "Not perfect," he said. "This pale piece of pig's ear is many things, but perfect anything is not one of them."

"Actually," Remo said, "I think they were trying to kill us."

"This fly couldn't kill directly. It's been bred to function as a catalyst," Schweid said.

"Oh. Well, that explains everything," Remo said. "Of course."

"Why is this idiot talking about caterpillars?" Chiun mumbled under his breath in Korean. "Flies, caterpillars, I am tired of bugs."

"No," Schweid said to Remo. "The fly has no strength of its own. But . . . well, it was all in Dexter Morley's notes. Unlike ordinary houseflies, this one can bite. And its bite does something to the host body."

"The bitee?" Remo said.

"Right. It puts him into a plane with cosmic curves to which the body is not usually attuned," Schweid said.

"Say what?" Remo said.

"It's simple really. Take an ant."

"Now ants," Chiun grumbled in English.

"Can't we just talk about flies?" Remo asked Barry.

"The ant is a better example. An ant can carry hundreds of times its own weight. How do you think it can do that?"

"Chiun does it all the time," Remo said. "He has me carry everything."

"Silence, imbecile," Chiun barked. "Breathing," he said to Barry matter-of-factly. "It is the basic principle of Sinanju. The breath is at the core of being."

"Chiun, we're talking about ants," Remo said. "Not philosophy."

"But he's right," Schweid said.

"Of course," Chiun said.

"Their bodily systems are capable of refracting cosmic curves of energy in such a way that their strength is completely disproportionate to their body mass. Actually, any species could achieve this strength, if it could muster the concentration for it," Schweid said. "It's just that ants don't have to concentrate. It happens naturally for them."

"You say any species could do this?" Remo said. "Could you?"

"I think so, if I could concentrate." His apple cheeks beamed. "But it'll need Blankey." He picked up the ragged blue blanket and tossed it around his shoulders like a warrior's cloak, then looked into space.

"I'm going to try to concentrate on the cosmic curves in this room," Barry said, "and make myself one with them." He took a deep breath, then another, and another. His eyes glazed. He stood stock-still for several minutes, gazing into nothingness, breathing like a locomotive.

Remo yawned and drummed his fingers on his forearm.

"Is this almost a wrap?" he asked.

"Silence," Chiun hissed.

"Oh, you can't be serious," Remo began, but Chiun silenced him with a glance that would crack granite. After a few moments more, Barry raised his head, a look of exultation in his eyes. Tentatively he reached out with one hand to grasp the leg of the laboratory table.

"Come on," Remo.said. "That's got to weigh three hundred pounds."

Barry looked toward a wall, and the table lifted an inch off the ground.

Remo gaped as Barry lifted the table another inch, then another. The face of the fat little man in the baby blanket showed no strain or effort, only innocent rapture. He raised the table to eye level, his arm fully outstretched, then slowly lowered it. Not one item on the table had moved, not so much as a red wing from the dissected fly. Barry set the table down without a sound.

"Excellent," Chiun said.

"I can't believe it," Remo said.

"I can," Chiun said. He turned to Barry. "I have been looking for a pupil. Would you be willing to wear a kimono?" Before Barry could answer, Chiun said, "You would make a fine pupil. We could begin today with the tigers' paws exercises."