Warren Murphy - Last Drop

"A plastic polymer," Arnold explained helpfully. He strolled past Remo, poking him gently on his arm. "Very effective, I'd say. I never tried it before on a human, but it seems to have done the job nicely. You're as immobile as Lot's wife. Excuse me."

He picked up the decanter of brandy, poured himself another glass, and brushed past Remo again into the corridor, where he stood beside the telephone with its red button. He scrutinized the human statue standing beside him.

"You'll suffocate, you know. But for all that, you'll have to die twice." He sipped at his drink. "Frankly, I'm surprised you're still alive. But then you may not be. The polymer seals the eyes open. The hamsters and monkeys I've experimented with remained quite lifelike long after death. A real boon for taxidermy."

He opened the closet door and removed the skeleton from it. He took it to the far end of the living room and arranged it beside the broken glass wall.

"Curious?" He laughed. "Very well. On the off chance that you're still alive, I'll tell you what I'm doing. The great drawback of being a criminal genius is that one has so little opportunity to talk of one's achievements."

He looked at the skeleton lovingly for a moment, then took a box of matches from one of the mahogany tables and set fire to the draperies.

"This," he said, gesturing to the skeleton, "is myself. The dental work matches mine exactly. When the authorities come to investigate the fire, they will find three bodies: poor Esmeralda, who leaped to her death rather than subject herself to the flames, her grief-stricken stepson, who perished while contemplating the terrible fate of his beloved "Mater," and a stranger, perhaps a visitor to the house, perhaps the arsonist himself."

The flames rose higher. The precious paintings on the walls curled and buckled. Arnold moved away from the heat, past Remo into the corridor.

"No one will notice the flowers. They are an unknown species. They, with the beans, are far enough below to escape damage from the fire. And my underground laboratory, designed against every conceivable natural disaster, will remain hidden. Only Esmeralda's house and its three occupants will vanish from the earth." He smiled. "There's more. I've thought of everything."

His eyes glowed as he told of his plans. "After a decent interval, there will be a buyer for the property. No, not me, but another whom I trust. Someone, if that is possible, nearly as intelligent as myself. This person will rebuild this house. The crops will be harvested as usual, business will continue, and I shall return, nameless and free."

He loosened his tie. "Well, there's no point in telling you any more. I'm sure you've gone to your reward by now, and the heat, I must say, is becoming oppressive."

He lifted the telephone to his ear and pressed the red button twice in succession. "Father, I'm coming," he said, and hung up. Then he walked into the closet where the skeleton had hung. There was a faint whirr, and then silence. Arnold was gone.

Then the closet itself burst into flame. The passageway leading to the laboratory was obliterated.

Remo had stopped breathing long before, and could remain in that state for hours, if necessary. But he did not have hours. There were flames on both sides of him, and even in the desensitized state of his body beneath the rock-hard glue that covered it, he was beginning to feel the searing heat.

He stood, rooted, while an invisible thread inside him coiled and uncoiled in frenzied frustration. Something was calling to him, urging him to action. It was near to pain, the insistent thrumming of the deep string within him.

Chiun. Chiun wanted him, needed him, and there was nothing he could do.

A gust of air whooshed in through the broken glass wall and sent a tongue of flame curling around him. He closed his eyes. The inside of his eyelids felt cool against their dry surface.

The inside of his eyelids, he thought. He had blinked.

And then, throbbing with the heat, one finger moved.

?Chapter Fourteen

The clock on Smith's desk read 12:01. He rubbed his hand over his face. The movement hurt his side. Then he pulled out his chair and painfully began to rise.

"Halt." A small hand, strong as a vise, clasped his arm above the elbow. Chiun did not meet his eyes. Instead, the old Oriental was gazing straight ahead, his breathing even and silent, his posture relaxed, but with an intensity about him that frightened Smith.

"A bargain is a bargain," Smith said.

"He is coming."

The grip on his arm was beginning to hurt, but Smith did not sit down. "We can't wait. There are too many things to... prepare."

He couldn't bring himself to say the word, "destroy," not when those things he would be destroying were the four massive computers that were the working components of his life. For just as Chiun had created Remo, Smith had created the Folcroft computers.

He had first designed them in the days before microcircuitry, when computers filled whole rooms. Little by little, as the technology of the 1960s and 1970s progressed, he refined the machines, replacing what parts he could with miniature components and redesigning the parts that did not exist on other computers— the circuits that could tap instantaneously into any other computer bank in the world, the parts that enabled the Folcroft Four to jam satellite transmissions— with his own hands.

And there were functions of the Four that Smith had added through the years, functions that still required the bulky hardware of the old days, because new hardware for these functions did not exist. The computers' ability to trace worldwide telephone connections, for example, hadn't been added until two years ago, after seventeen years of work, at odd times, in Smith's office. Seventeen years, but it had been worth it. There were other projects that hadn't been. When, after nine years, Smith had finally perfected the computers' capability to reproduce photographs in dot concentrations on plain paper, Xerox came out with a machine for general public use that did the same thing.

For Smith, developing the computers was an ongoing project, like raising a child. Parts of the process were frustrating and unpleasant, but for the most part, because the Folcroft Four were unique children, the business of testing them and creating them anew with each experiment was one that held for Smith the wonder of communication with a higher life form.

Now they stood, awkward and bulky, looking like amusing relics of a primitive technology, giving no outward sign of their extraordinary sophistication, their awesome abilities. There were four more just like them on a Caribbean island. When all eight were gone, their millions of hours of information turned to ash, there would not be another series like them for a hundred years.

"We can't wait," Smith repeated.

The hand grew tighter. It pulled Smith down into his chair. "He is coming," Chiun said.

"You're forcing me."

"I am doing what I must."

His breathing came faster.

His nasal passages were open. He could blink. Experimentally, Remo contracted the muscles of his upper arm. His forearm raised slowly. He worked at his legs. After exerting enough effort, it seemed, to kick in the Great Wall of China, one foot finally lifted. Strings of goo adhered between the sole of his shoe and the floor.

Another wave of flame swept near him. His neck bobbed forward.

It was melting.

Stiffly Remo pushed himself toward the closet, where the fire was streaking out in gusts.

Remo did not like fire but it no longer frightened him. Fears were remnants of another life, before Chiun had taught him to overcome the obstacles of fire and water and shock. He had walked through fire; he had been on fire himself in the past. He knew it held no real danger for him, as long as he kept himself quick and balanced and aware. But still, he had once been afraid, and old fears die hard, and it was difficult for Remo to stand in front of the open closet and let the wild orange flame lick him like a hungry beast.