Warren Murphy: Death Check

The sun played over the house, as they approached it, as if boiling it for an egg salad lunch.

"I like it," Remo said.

"Nobody likes it."

"I like it. I think it's a hell of an idea for a home."

"It's grotesque," Brewster said.

"That's your opinion."

"That's the opinion of everyone in Brewster Forum."

"No, it's not."

"No? Who likes it?"

"I like it."

"Oh, you. Well, I'm talking about everyone."

"I'm someone."

"You're our security officer."

"But I'm a someone."

"Yes. All right. If you want to look at it that way. He's in there. I touched nothing." Brewster stood at the entrance. The door was ajar.

Remo nodded. "It's really hard to refrain from panic in a situation like this," Brewster said. "You may not have noticed, but I was on the verge of panic. Fortunately, I have incredible self-control. But this pushed me to my limit."

"Okay," Remo said softly. Like most panic victims, Brewster had no recollection of his actions. He would not even remember fainting. "Stay here, Nils."

"Call me Dr. Brewster." He leaned against the door frame, still shaking. "We'd be in an awful fix if I were the type to lose my head," he said.

"Yes, Dr. Brewster, we would," Remo said.

"Call me Nils," Brewster said. Remo smiled reassuringly and went into the living room. He spotted the fireplace opening to Ratchett's special retreat. There was Ratchett, nude, his body half covered in a pink puddle of water and blood. His face was a final set mask of horror. Remo reached in, careful not to slosh around in the liquid, and flipped Ratchett over. So much for how they did it. Now they had attacked the scientists, and to save them it might be necessary to kill them. If he called the police now, the next passage from Dial-a-Prayer might well be Deuteronomy. Remo stepped back carefully and picked up Ratchett's phone. It was a vulnerable phone. But he was not doing business.

He dialled information, got the number of Dr. Deborah Hirshbloom, and dialled it. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Remo looked to the ceiling without seeing, looked to the floor without seeing and whistled impatiently. And the phone rang.

"Shit," he said and hung up.

He went outside.

"Shocking, wasn't it?" said Brewster.

"What?" said Remo, his mind still on the phone call.

"You look upset."

"Oh. Yes. Shocking scene. Awful."

"If you were as familiar with violence and its dynamics as a human form of expression, if you were as familiar with it as I am, it might have been easier for you, son."

"I suppose so," Remo said. Dammit, she wasn't home. This was his day off peak. And he planned to spend it with her. All day and all night. And now she wasn't home.

Dr. Brewster reached for something in his pocket, and brought out a pipe and a ripped bag of tobacco. "How the hell did this happen?" he said, looking at the ripped pouch as if it had betrayed him. "My pants are dirty too. I must have brushed against something." He lit his pipe.

"Violence is a strange thing," Dr. Brewster said, musing on the smoke. "Many people never learn to accept it as a part of life."

She was supposed to be home. All right, maybe she had just gone out for something. Maybe she was just being funny. Playing a game. Or maybe she had changed her mind. The bitch. The little Israeli bitch had changed her mind.

The two men went back to the forum center, the scientists talking, musing, explaining, pontificating, placing the elements of life and death in intellectual perspective. Remo Williams was planning. If she was just trying to make him wait, he would be very casual. Say that he wasn't sure of the time. Was she late? Oh. Or maybe he'd disappear for a while and be late himself. No. He'd see her and tell her she was immature.

"You see," Brewster explained. "Even though you are a policeman, you have not fully accepted the fact of violence as an integral part of man's life. You have not come to terms with the very obvious fact that man is a killer. And his greatest game is man himself. A predator. Only late in development did he become herbivorous. The overreaction against violence in more backward American communities is an eruption of the sublimation of violence. Which is really not sick. Violence is healthy, human. Vital."

Maybe he would call her a kike and just walk away. But what if she laughed when he said that? Worse, what if she were hurt? He would apologize and hold her. But if she were really hurt, she wouldn't let him. No. Not Deborah. She would laugh. Right at him. In his face. Then he would laugh. Then it would be all right.

"I know it's difficult, son, but as I was explaining to some general or other, no, a congressman, I believe-well, in any case, one of those things. I told him that perhaps policemen like yourself are the ones who are least able to handle violence and therefore are drawn toward it as a profession. You know that's how we get funding?"

"What?" said Remo.

"How we get funding, son," Dr. Brewster explained. "You exploit their little dreams or fears. Whatever."

"What are you talking about?" Remo asked. He would take care of Deborah later. "I was finding it hard to follow."

"Our funding, son. The way to get funding is to decide what you want, then throw in something the government may want. As an afterthought. Like our study on the community life of combat."

"Yes?"

"Well, that paid for Schulter's animal experiments and Boyle's ethnic studies."

"I see," said Remo. "And your little plan to conquer the world?" He dropped the reference casually.

"That bought the golf course, the auditorium and about five more years of just about anything we want. I don't know why I trust you like this. I just do. I'm a good judge of men."

He was, thought Remo, like most people who do not work at it, a very bad judge of himself. He trusted now because he felt safe. Apparently, he had taken Remo's preoccupation with Deborah as shock over the Ratchett killing and no longer felt threatened by someone who might possibly be above panic.

"Is there a plan to conquer the world?"

"Yes, of course. You could conquer the world with 50,000 men. Provided, the rest of the world wanted to be conquered. Hah. You see, it takes the cooperation of the losers. But we're not going to include that in any study for at least three years though, not until we have another funding source. Your job is safe with us for another three years."

So it was just a hustle, after all. All the federal funds, the secrecy, the work of CURE, the deaths of McCarthy and Hawkins and Ratchett, all of it was only to allow these harmless nits to go on figuring up days and down days, drugging rhinoceroses and lowering heartbeats. A goddam hustle.

"I imagine Deborah was working on that plan."

"Don't call her Deborah. She's Dr. Hirshbloom. I personally don't mind, but you know how some of these medical doctors get. No, as a matter of fact, she wasn't the least bit interested. Recently, I've been getting the impression she is interested in nothing but chess. A fine mind. But very unproductive, I'm afraid."

"Uh, uh," said Remo, who noticed suddenly that he had been walking in his old manner, the natural walk of his youth and early manhood. His peak was falling rapidly now. Several times a day now, he was forced to go back mentally to his little room, where Chiun waited. But the effect was wearing off more and more rapidly. His vitality was ebbing.

Brewster was rambling on about his plan to conquer the world. Of course, it could be pulled off if each soldier in the Army could be brought up to twenty percent capacity. Did it shock Remo that the average man used less than ten per cent? But no one yet, Brewster said, had reached twenty per cent. He wasn't even sure if a human being could survive using twenty per cent of his capabilities. So, in a way, the forum was really giving the government its money's worth. A brilliant plan that was impossible. Generals like those sort of things.