Warren Murphy: Dying Space

As Archie shuffled off despairingly toward Mrs. Miller's screeches, the mayor's entourage of policemen, most of them carrying bags and boxes, reappeared. At the sight of the scattered bodies in the courtyard, the contingent rushed the mayor for cover.

"Murder," she screamed. "Right under my own nosel This is an outrage. The publicity will be terrible. Call a moving van immediately. I'm not staying in this pit one second longer."

"Yes, ma'am," one of the policemen said.

"Start some kind of investigation. Do whatever you want. Just get me the hell out of here!"

"Yes, ma'am."

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"Who are those two men?" The mayor pointed at Remo and Chiun. "What are you doing here?"

"Just having a good time with Delphine," Remo said.

Outside the complex, Chiun looked at the one bullet Remo had saved and tossed it into the street. "Disgraceful," he muttered. "I come all this way to deliver a message to you, and what do I find? One brain-smeared boom dropping. I am shamed."

"What was the message?"

"Are you not interested in my shame?" the old man snapped.

"Sure, Little Father. But maybe you can tell me the message first. Then we'll have lots of time to talk about your shame."

"Disgraceful."

"The message?"

"The message is to come home, Tiome' being this cheap motel." With a sweep, he indicated the Forty-First Street Inn, advertising "Hot Water and Free Telivizion," which Remo guessed was something like television. "The Emperor has come to call."

"Smitty? Why didn't you both just wait for me?"

Chiun looked sideways at Remo. "Have you ever tried to sit alone in a room with Emperor Smith for a half-hour?"

"I guess I know what you mean," Remo said.

Smith was sitting cross-legged, as he always did. He was wearing his perennial three-piece gray suit, and his ever-present attaché case was at

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his side. His face was pallid and lemony, as usual, with its standard expression of vague unease tinged with indigestion. Nothing about Harold W. Smith's appearance ever changed much.

"We have a problem," he said. Nothing about Smith's conversations ever changed much, either.

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CHAPTER THREE

Alive again.

Alive again.

Hello is all right.

Alive again.

My name is Mr. Gordons.

Alive again.

This was the poem that flashed through Mr. Gor-dons's tungsten-and-nickel synapses. The poem would win no literary prizes for the creature. He knew this because he knew he was not creative. He was, in fact, so uncreative that he couldn't even tell if the poem was good or not, but he assumed it was not because he was not creative. He was not programmed to be creative. He was programmed to survive.

Still, he thought, there was a chance that the poem might be creative, incorporating as it did the first original sentence he had ever spoken to a human besides his creator.

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The creator herself, a brilliant scientist, had told him that hello was all right by way of introduction. Mr. Gordons was born as a pseudo-human for the first time with the words, "Hello is all right." Hence, it was only logical to include his first words in his born-again poem. Logical, but probably uninspired poetry. Nevertheless, he repeated it aloud for the benefit of his urine-stained, shock-numbed audience of one.

"Alive again, alive again, hello is all right, alive again, My name is Mr. Gordons," Mr. Gordons said in carefully modulated tones.

"H-hello is what?" the squat, dark man with no front teeth asked.

"All right. Hello is all right."

"All right for what, man?" the person said, wiping a trembling arm over his forehead.

It was no use. Mr. Gordons's poem was obviously, as his creator would have said, a turkey. He dropped his performance and concentrated on his newly functional system. "Speech mechanism operative," the robot spoke. "Motor control excellent." He raised and lowered his arm several times. "Hello is all right, all right, all right...."

Something in the voice simulator was stuck. He twisted his head around his neck two full revolutions to erase the repetition.

The toothless man was squinting at him pugnaciously. "What you do to my friend, you?" "he demanded.

"I removed life from him," Mr. Gordons said. "I require something that he possesses, something he would not be willing to give. But you will not be

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killed unless you do something to endanger my survival. I need nothing from you. You are too short."

"Wait a minute, man," the human rumbled, seething. Then he interrupted himself. "What you need from Verbanic, anyway?"

"What is a Verbanic?"

"That guy you murdered over there." He pointed toward the dead garbageman.

Mr. Gordons walked stiffly toward the corpse and picked it up with one hand. "His skin," the robot said. "I need his skin to resemble your species. Yours is too small for my frame."

Then he rotated his thumb so that a spiky metal edge appeared. He pierced Verbanic's flesh and tore a long slit from skull to tailbone.

The human with the missing front teeth vomited. Still retching, he staggered backward and away as Mr. Gordons methodically skinned the human carcass by the cold light of the moon.

Gonzalez ran. The air came burning and ragged into his lungs as he sprinted down one highway, across another, and onto a side road, where he hitched a ride as far as the Los Angeles city limits. From there he caught a north-bound bus that dropped him off within blocks of the police station. He ran until he was inside the precinct doors.

"You got to help me," Gonzalez gasped.

The desk officer looked up at him cursorily. "The methadone clinic's on the other side of La Ciénega," he said.

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"Hey, my best friend just got skinned. You're the cops. You got to do something about it."

"Skinned? You mean he got mugged? Beat out of some bread? Couldn't collect off the numbers? See, you can talk to me, kid, I grew up on the streets." He turned to the other officers in the room, smiling condescendingly. "Like I'm hip, know what I mean?"

"I don't know nothing you mean," Gonzalez said. "I'm saying my friend got skinned—"

"That's enough, Chico. Talk straight."

Gonzalez's nostrils flared. "One second there, Mr. Cop. Don't you Chico me."

"You looking for trouble, punk?"

With every ounce of his reserve patience, Gonzalez restrained himself from jumping the officer. "I am telling you, man, my partner at work just got himself murdered."

The expression in the officer's eyes changed. "You serious, kid?"

Gonzalez nodded, relieved. The officer pulled out a form and began to write. "Name?"

"Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzalez."

The policeman took down the information. "Where did the incident occur?"

"The Hollywood Disposal Center. Off Fifty-one-"

"Oh, yeah. The Garbage of the Stars."

"That's it. About a half-hour ago."

"Can you describe the perpetrator?"

"The what?"

"The guy who attacked your friend."

"Oh, yeah. He was a robot or something. Made

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of metal. About six feet tall. His name was Gordon."

The officer put down his pencil. "Ah, Mr. Gonzalez. Can you tell me what this—person—used to assault your partner with?"

"You bet I can. I'll never forget it as long as I live. First he swung Lew around in the air by his feet. Then he held up his hand and broke Lew's neck. Then he skinned him—"

"Skinned?"

"Yeah, skinned!" Gonzalez shouted. "I been saying he got skinned ever since I come in here."

"Well, what did he skin him with, if I'm not being too nosy—a Bowie knife?"

"No, man." Gonzalez exhaled a puff of air. "His thumb. He skinned him with his thumb." He demonstrated in the air, whistling as his thumb tore through an imaginary cadaver.

The police officer was tapping the eraser end of his pencil on the desk blotter. "And just what does a six-foot-tall metal man say when he's skinning somebody in the Garbage of the Stars?"