Warren Murphy: Funny Money

Remo shrugged.

"I didn't program him for counterfeiting," she said heatedly. "One day I had a staff meeting about our money problems. I said the government was destroying us. I think I said that if we had money, we'd survive. Money always means survival. Something like that."

She finished the drink with an angry swallow and bellowed again for Mr. Seagrams.

"Anyway, Mr. Gordons was in the room. He overheard. That night he left. The next day he sent me a pile of counterfeit money. To help me survive, the note said."

"And with perfect counterfeits, it was easy," Remo said.

"At first they weren't perfect." She paused while the liquor cart refilled her glass. "But I kept sending the bills back to him with suggestions. Finally he got them right."

"Well now, we're going to get him right. Tonight you announce a new creativity program. Announce that you're going to test it the day after tomorrow on a rocket launch from here."

"I'll do it," Dr. Carlton said. "But what chance do you think you're going to have against him? He's indestructible. He's a survivor."

"We'll think of something," Remo said.

But Remo had misgivings. In their room at the laboratory that night, he told Chiun, "It's not going to work, Chiun."

"Why?"

"Because Mr. Gordons will see through it. He's going to know it's a phony and we're behind it. It doesn't take the creativity of a snail to see that."

"Aha," Chiun said, raising his long-nailed right index finger skyward. "I have thought of that. I have thought of everything."

"Why don't you tell me about it?"

"I will." Chiun opened his kimono at the throat. "Do you notice anything?"

"Your neck seems thinner. Have you been losing weight?"

"No, not my weight. Remember the lead lump I have been wearing about my neck? It is gone."

"Good. It was ugly anyway."

Chiun shook his head. Remo was dumb sometimes. "That was a thing from Mr. Gordons. One of those beep-beeps your government is always using. An insect, I think you call them."

"A bug?"

"Yes. That is it. An insect. Anyway, I kept it and buried it in lead so Mr. Gordons would get no signals from it."

"So?"

"So when we came here, I took it out of the lead, so Mr. Gordons would get signals."

"Well, that's dumb, Chiun. Now he's going to know we're here. That's just what I said."

"No," Chiun said. "I put in it an envelope and mailed it away. To a place all Americans love and always go to."

"Where's that?"

"Niagara Falls. Mr. Gordons will see that we have gone away to Niagara Falls. He will not know we are here."

Remo raised his eyebrows. "It might work, Chiun. Very creative."

"Thank you. Now I am going to sleep."

Later, as Remo was drifting off to sleep, Chiun said, "Do not feel bad, Remo. You will be creative too one day. Maybe Dr. Carlton will make a program for you." And he cackled.

"Up yours," Remo said, but very quietly.

The next day, Dr. Carlton's announcement had appeared in the press. It came to the attention of two sets of eyes: the brilliant eyes of Dr. Harold W. Smith and the electronic sensors that reposed behind the plastic face of Mr. Gordons. Both had boarded planes for Cheyenne, Wyoming.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was late the next day when Dr. Harold W. Smith presented himself at the steel gate outside the Wilkins Laboratories.

Remo was in the office with Dr. Carlton when she demanded to know who was at the door.

"Dr. Harold W. Smith," came back the voice.

Remo took the microphone from Dr. Carlton.

"Sorry. We have all the brushes we need," he said.

"Remo? Is that you?"

"Who's Remo?" asked Remo.

"Remo. Open this gate."

"Go away."

"Let me talk to someone in possession of all his faculties," insisted Smith.

Remo handed the microphone back to Dr. Carlton. "He must want to talk to you."

"Do you think I've got all my faculties?" she asked.

"You've got all of everything," Remo said.

"You really think so?"

"I've always thought so."

"What are you going to do about it?" Dr. Carlton asked.

"I know what I'd like to do."

"Yes?"

"But."

"But what?"

"But I don't really feel like making love to you and that computer too."

"Screw the computer," Dr. Carlton said.

"It'll have to wait its turn," said Remo.

"Remo, Remo," squawked Dr. Smith's voice.

Remo picked up the microphone. "Wait there a few minutes, Smitty. We're busy now."

"All right, but don't take forever."

"Don't tell him what to do," Dr. Carlton said into the microphone. She turned it off and said to Remo, "I don't like Dr. Smith."

"To know him is to dislike him. To know him well is to detest him."

"Let him wait."

Dr. Smith waited forty-five minutes before the steel panel opened. He walked along the corridor and the steel wall opened and he entered to find Remo and Dr. Carlton sitting at her desk.

"I knew you'd be here," he told Remo. "You're Dr. Carlton?"

"Yes. Dr. Smith, I presume?"

"Yes." He looked through the open doorway to the three-story-high control panel of the computer center. "That is quite something," he said.

"Mr. Daniels," she said. "Jack Daniels. There's nothing like it in the world."

"How many synapses?" asked Smith.

"Two billion," she said.

"Incredible."

"Come, I'll show you," and she rose to her feet.

Remo waited but was finally disgusted by so many "incredibles" and "marvelouses" and "wonderfuls" that he went back to his room, where Smith joined him and Chiun later and reported on Mr. Gordons's latest demand.

"Well, don't worry about it," Remo said. "He'll be here."

"I think he is here," Smith said. "There was a passenger booked on an earlier flight. Mr. G. Andrew. I think it was him."

"Then we'll see him in the morning."

Smith nodded and then said nothing more until he left for his room to sleep.

"The emperor is disturbed," said Chiun.

"I know it. He thinks this and he thinks that. When did you ever hear Smith anything less than positive?"

"He is worried about you," said Chiun. "He is afraid his emperor may tell him to hand up your head."

"My head? What about yours?"

"If it comes to that, Remo, you must tell Mr. Gordons that I am the sole support of a large village. It is different with you. You are an orphan and nobody relies on you. But many people will starve and want for food and shelter if I am no longer here to provide them."

"I'll try to put a good word in for you," Remo said.

"Thank you," said Chiun. "It is only right. After all, I am important. And creative."

Smith was in better spirits the next morning when he and Remo went to inspect the rocket launching chute. It was a giant brick tube, coated with steel plates, built into the center of the building. It stood as high as the top of the three-story building and extended two stories below ground, fifty feet high in all.

A rocket sat in there now, a thirty-foot-high needle-shaped missile. Liquid oxygen was being poured into its motors by elaborate pumping equipment built into the walls. Looking into the chute, raised a few feet above the launch pad, was the control room, shielded behind a thick clear plastic window. A steel door was cut into the wall of the chute next to the window and led into the control room.

Inside the control room, Smith looked out at the rocket and asked Remo, "Is there a way we could lure him onto the rocket and launch him into space?"

Remo shook his head. "You don't understand. He's a survival machine. He'd figure a way to get back down. We've got to destroy the matter that he is created from. That's the only way to get him."

"Out of the way, boys." Dr. Carlton, all business in a long white robe, brushed by them and went to the control panel where she began flipping toggle switches and checking readings on the rocket's internal pressure. Walking along behind her was Chiun, who stood at her shoulder and watched her work.