Brain Storm (19 page)

A look of determination in his eyes, Dr. Curt Newton stepped on the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

"I told you to clean up in here," Lothar Holz snapped.

The bodies of Mervin Fischer and Zach Pendrake had been piled, one atop the other, against the wall near the door. There was a mop and bucket that had obviously been used to clean up Fischer's blood.

The water in the large bucket was a stained crimson. The blond-haired man nodded his apology and wordlessly took the handle of the mop and steered the wheeled bucket into a small side room. A moment later, the sound of water being slopped into a deep basin echoed out into the vast room.

"These are the ones you told me about?" von Breslau asked, ignoring the noise. He indicated the corpses on the floor.

Holz nodded. "The one in the dress shirt was our test subject. He literally put his fist through the body of the other one," Holz said, his tone like that of a proud parent whose child had just won a spelling bee.

Von Breslau stooped and examined the bodies. He removed a pen from his pocket and prodded Pendrake's shattered hand. As he did so, the blond assistant reentered the room, having disposed of the matter of the cleanup.

"How long was it before this man exhibited an increase in strength?" von Breslau asked.

"A minute. Two, perhaps. It happened very quickly." He suppressed a giddy laugh.

"Yes," von Breslau said. "Perhaps too quickly."

Holz furrowed his brow. "We pushed him too fast? Was that the problem?"

"I do not know. That is what I am here to find out." With difficulty he straightened up. "I want to test this procedure of yours immediately," he added, walking back over to Holz, removing his jacket and throwing it to the floor. When the assistant moved to retrieve it, the old man told him not to bother.

"Wouldn't you like to review the data first? I can have one of the scientists explain the interface technique."

"I cannot be bothered with that now. I understand this—" he tapped Holz on the chest "—what you can feel, what you can touch. My world is the physical. I need to see this incredible discovery for myself to judge whether or not my journey has been wasted."

"Surely you want to review my report on this one?" Holz indicated the body of Zach Pendrake.

"For background?"

"I trust my eyes. I do not trust reports."

Holz nodded in understanding. "You're right, of course. I'll see if I can find—" He fell silent, a startled look on his face.

Curt Newton had just stormed through the door to the lab. The scientist's eyes were angry as he searched out Holz. When he found him over by a disused mainframe, he marched purposefully over.

"I don't appreciate being shut out of my own research," he said accusingly.

"Curt, this is not the time—"

"Don't tell me that. Don't you dare tell me that.

Not when you're bringing in this...this amateur. I did all the work. It's only fair I get the credit."

"You will. Please, Curt." He was leaning and twisting, trying to interpose himself between Newton and the bodies on the floor. His gyrations weren't successful.

"Oh, my..." When he at last saw the bodies, Newton's voice was small.

"Who is this?" von Breslau demanded impatiently.

Newton had stepped past both of them, inching closer to the two corpses. "That's...oh, my. That's Mervin, isn't it? And that's, that's Pembrake. He's a company lawyer or something. What happened?"

He squatted on his haunches by the bodies, more curious than repelled.

"It is an internal problem, Curt."

"Not by the looks of it," Newton scoffed. He was looking at the hole in Mervin Fischer's chest through which some indistinguishable organs had slipped.

"Did he impale himself on his keyboard?"

"We are looking into the matter," Holz assured him. Still squatting, Newton turned. "I think it's safe to assume he's not a cop," he said, indicating von Breslau.

"Who is this man?" von Breslau asked again.

"Dr. Curt Newton. He pioneered the interface technology."

"He is the inventor? Good, I have need of his expertise."

"Wait a minute there, Grampa," Newton said, standing.

Holz held up a staying hand. He seemed to consider something deeply. When he seemed to reach an internal decision, he beckoned Newton to him.

"You remember that difficulty you had three years ago?" Holz whispered. "The traffic accident?"

Newton felt as if he had just been punched in the stomach.

He remembered a Christmas party that had gotten a little out of hand. He also vaguely remembered a body lying in some snow. It was an indistinct memory, almost like a dream. He didn't know what Holz had done that horrible night. All he knew was after the phone call he had left his car at the scene and been driven home. The vehicle was in his driveway when he awoke the following morning, washed and waxed and gleaming as if nothing had happened.

Newton had forced the incident from his consciousness. For his part, Holz had never breathed a word of the incident. Until now.

Newton gulped and nodded.

"It is good to remember some things, good to forget others," Holz remarked, nodding toward the bodies. Again Newton silently indicated his understanding. "You have made some remarkable advances here, Curt," Holz said approvingly. "With the aid of Dr.

von Breslau, you will make even more."

Newton gulped. "Breslau? That wouldn't be Erich Von Breslau, would it?"

The old man ignored the question. Holz leaned in closer to Newton. He said crisply, "You will not tell anyone. The doctor is involved in the management structure of PlattDeutsche International. If this is discovered, there are forces who would argue that all of our research is tainted. Including your own."

Newton's mind was racing. His brain conjured up images, countless photographs he had seen over the years, depicting horrific scenes of a war that had ended three years before he was born. He saw London after the blitz; merchant vessels sinking, torpedo victims, orphans crying in the streets, wasted figures in tattered clothes lined up along barbed-wire fences, shallow mass graves stacked with rotting corpses.

Putting all of that on one end of a scale, he placed his own career on the other. His career won out.

He heard the voice of Lothar Holz, breaking through his thoughts.

"Curt? Do you have a problem with this?"

Newton blinked. He glanced at Holz, then at the small aged man standing impatiently next to him. He didn't look all that dangerous.

Newton extended his hand. "I'm certain I will enjoy working with you, Doctor." And the smile Curt Newton flashed was sincere.

16

Remo and Chiun took the interstate from New York onto the Jersey turnpike. On either side of the high-way, industrialized New Jersey was a joyless, flat expanse of smoke-belching factories built in swamps.

At night the ugly yellow glow of a million parking lot and chimney lights gave the flats the surreal tone of a depressing futuristic film. In the day, everything just looked squalid.

Chiun sniffed at the air, thick with chemicals and other pollutants. His face became a pucker of displeased wrinkles. "Why do they call this province

'new'?" he asked Remo.

"Because it was at one time," Remo replied.

"The newness has been eroded. It is time it was renamed Old Jersey."

"I think that's over in Europe. It's an island or something in the English Channel."

Chiun's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Its history predates that of this malodorous place?"

"By centuries."

"Remind me never to visit there, Remo, for time has surely allowed the vile Old Jersians to amass an even greater volume of filth than their descendants."

"Not very bloody likely, but I'll make a note of it," Remo promised.

They got off the turnpike near Highland Park and threaded their way over to Edison.

The PlattDeutsche America complex occupied a separate corner of an industrial park near the edge of town. It had its own fence to cordon it off from the other buildings on the site. Several tin patches decorated in red, white and blue adorned the fence at regular intervals. They sported the logo of a private security company.

Remo parked his car in one of the nearer lots and he and Chiun walked the rest of the way over to the PlattDeutsche America compound.

It was nearly nine and the place was open for business. People hustled from building to building. Cars were continually passing back and forth through the main gate.

4 'I don't like this," Remo warned. "Maybe we should wait until tonight."

"I do not wish to prolong my exposure to this foul air. When you were last here, to which building were you brought?"

"That one," Remo said, pointing at one of two matching buildings at the front of the complex. It was a gleaming steel-and-glass structure. The early morning sun reflected brilliantly off hundreds of huge, glistening black panes.

"Then that is where we begin."

Chiun's hand chopped down. The links of the high fence popped, one after the other, beneath the side of his razor nails. When there was a large enough gap in the fence, he wrapped his fingers around the serrated edge and drew it back.

Remo followed Chiun through the tear in the fence and the two of them made their way across a stretch of well-watered lawn for the main building.

"I don't think we should barge in through the front door," Remo said when they were on the sidewalk encircling the building. A vast parking area stretched out to their left.

"The Master of Sinanju does not use the servant's entrance," Chiun sniffed.

Remo paused on the sidewalk. Grudgingly Chiun stopped, as well.

"Look, Chiun. It doesn't make sense to announce we're here. You might not be worried about that gadget of theirs, but I am. If we go in the front door, their security is going to know something's up. We don't even have passes."

Chiun glanced at the entrance. Several employees were passing into the building at that moment, their laminated security tags attached to a lapel or hanging from the neck. An older woman had one clipped to her pocketbook.

"Wait here, O worrier," Chiun said with an annoyed sigh.

Stranding Remo on the sidewalk, Chiun flounced off toward the parking lot, disappearing behind a tall row of neatly trimmed shrubs. He returned a moment later, two plastic tags in his frail hand. He handed one to Remo. "You may stop worrying now."

Remo looked at his tag. It identified him as Louis Washington III. A charcoal black face was pasted in the corner of the pass.

"This doesn't fill me with much confidence,"

Remo said as he affixed the tag to the collar of his T-shirt.

"These will not even be necessary," Chiun insisted. He clipped his tag to the front of his kimono.

"I am merely indulging you. Come."

As if he were master of the entire PlattDeutsche complex, Chiun marched boldly for the door. Reluctantly Remo trailed in his wake.

Less than a minute later, they were roaming the corridors of the company's research-and-development wing. The passes had gotten them beyond the main security desk and onto the elevator. The guard at the R&D level hadn't even looked up when they disembarked from the elevator.

A gold-embossed sign above the main corridor read Advanced Research Division, but it looked as though the research division had become fixated on a single item. Almost the entire floor had been turned over to the Dynamic Interface System. Down the hall were a few smaller signs announcing Computer Labs, DIS; Product Design, DIS; and Physical Cryptology.

On the door of the last lab, a hand-written note was taped to the wall: 4'Dr. Curt Newton, resident genius."

Chiun sniffed the air. "I do not sense the vibrations of the innerfaze device," he said.

"They might not have the machine turned on,"

Remo suggested.

"Is this the correct floor?"

Remo glanced around, considering. "I'm not sure.

All these rooms look alike."

Chiun nodded his understanding. "The banality of American architecture."

"Maybe we should split up," Remo suggested, thinking it would improve the odds that one of them would destroy either the interface equipment or Holz.

It would eliminate the chance that they would both be taken at once.

"Agreed." Chiun spun on his heel and marched down the corridor.

As he watched him go, Remo noted that the old Korean looked very small, very frail. He wished he could have impressed upon his teacher the frustration he had felt at being manipulated so easily. It was a feeling of helplessness he wished the Master of Sinanju would never have to experience.

"Chiun?" Remo called.

"Yes?"

"Be careful."

Chiun did not turn. "I am never not."

Newton affixed the electrodes carefully. His test subject—a program accountant—appeared disinterested in the procedure. Newton talked while he worked.

"I was surprised to find a lot of his abilities were stored in memory," he said over his shoulder.

Von Breslau, from his spot near the electrocardi-ogram machines, looked up for a minute. "That is consistent with my knowledge of Sinanju."

"Is it?" Newton sounded upset. "I wish Lothar had been more up front about everything earlier. I hate playing catch-up."

"I see in your notes something about 4co autono.'

What is this?" Von Breslau was near the electrocar-diogram. His thin lips pursed unhappily as he read some of the hasty notes Newton had scrawled to himself in the van the day before.

"Controlled autonomous," Newton explained.

"That was the only way I could think to describe it.

He is able to physically control every autonomic response. It's like one big motor nervous system."

And the nervous system is altered, you say?"

Newton laughed. "It would have to be, wouldn't it? But I don't think it's been altered medically. It's more likely the result of an ongoing training. My people speculate the level our Subject A was at took at least a decade to achieve. Perhaps more." He finished with the electrodes and joined von Breslau near the monitoring equipment.