to slap the Off button with a furious palm when Remo suddenly sat up at attention.
'Hold it, Chiun,' he said, raising an impatient hand.
The news anchor had segued into the next story.
Remo saw the image of a crowded bank interior, taken from above, as if from stationary security cameras.
Chiun looked at the screen and then back to Remo.
'Have you developed an even greater taste for inanity?' he asked blandly.
Remo was sitting forward in his chair, his brow furrowed in concern. 'That's Smitty,' Remo said, pointing to the screen.
At the back of the still image, through the stationary bank crowd, the profile of Dr. Harold W. Smith could be clearly discerned. He was standing before a desk at which a man was squatting inexplicably over a chair.
'No, you are not watching still images,' the anchorman said with cloying playfulness. His producer had told the anchorman to use a light touch with the viewers during the next fluff piece. He managed to be both condescending and overbearing at the same time. 'This was the scene at the Butler Bank of New York today as over one hundred patrons and startled bank employees had their assets, quite literally, frozen.'
The camera began panning. Remo was surprised to see that it wasn't a stationary picture, frozen on a single image. Instead, it was the scene below that seemed locked in space. The camera stopped, completing its programmed arc, but Remo could still make out the pinched features of the CURE director.
Even with the imperfect clarity of the television screen—which was limited by the number of pix-els—Remo's sharp eyes spotted that of all the people, Smith alone wasn't completely immobile.
Though it wasn't enough to attract attention. A second later, a few normally moving figures came into camera range.
The anchor continued. 'A daring daylight robbery turned into a payday to those lucky enough to be caught in the cross hairs of a band of modern-day Robin Hoods. No, these robbers didn't steal from the rich and give to the poor. They stole from themselves. Network correspondent Gallic Uckbridge in New York has more.'
The reporter on the scene described the Dynamic Interface System as the screen showed the robbers stuffing cash into people's pockets.
Videotaped footage followed, featuring an im-promptu interview held on the sidewalk in front of the bank with PlattDeutsche America vice president for research and development, Lothar Holz.
Holz claimed that the interactive device would revolutionize home-entertainment systems, as well as increase automobile safety, eliminate the need for computer keyboards and physically connect the home of the future to the rest of the palpable world.
With DIS technology, he said, eventually a surgeon would be able to operate from halfway around the globe.
In the wrap-up, the reporter disclosed how the press corps had been kept at bay on the sidewalk while the experiment in the bank was going on. This was done, the reporter said, with the aid of the Dynamic Interface System. It was an application of the device, he noted wryly, that the White House was certainly already looking into.
When the story had finished and Remo seemed satisfied, Chiun slapped his hand against the small round button at the base of the console. The screen winked out.
'That's the business Smith was on today,' Remo mused.
'I do not know how you even recognized him. In that crowd, he was as a single grain of sand on a beach. A white beach.'
With a movement that was a flawless mixture of economy and delicacy, Chiun sank back to his wo-ven-reed mat in the center of the floor.
The skirts of his emerald green kimono slowly settled around his bony knees like air escaping from a gently settling parachute.
'The way he is about security,' Remo grunted,
'I'm surprised he's not going nuts.'
'Smith is already insane, Remo. The sky is seen in many shades of blue, but it is never striped.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
'It means that Smith is a lunatic, Smith was a lunatic and Smith will always be a lunatic. If there is a day he is more lunatic than another, it is only a matter of degree.'
'Just remember he's the lunatic who keeps us in rice and skittles.'
'And if his madness ever tells him to stop, the House of Sinanju will be better served to find an emperor who is not deranged. Leave me now, Remo.' And with that, Chiun closed his eyes in meditation.
Remo got up slowly from his seat. The frail old Asian sat in the center of his tatami mat—seemingly as motionless as the people in the Butler Bank. Remo knew that Chiun was breathing rhythmically, a Sinanju technique that aligned him with the natural forces of the universe.
Walking quietly toward the door, Remo pondered the newscast.
He knew that Smith valued the secrecy of CURE
over everything else. Nothing, except perhaps America itself, was more sacred to him than avoiding exposure. Even though it was a minor crowd scene and no one would possibly have picked him out, Remo couldn't help but think of his boss and what kind of reaction he'd have when he found out. If his past was any indication, a guest spot on the national news would probably make him lose his mind.
5
'See if it'll fire on 0010010. Okay, perfect. Now patch that across on LISP. There, that's it.'
Dr. Curt Newton was like a gleeful child turning pages in a favorite book. And with every turned page, he came closer to unlocking the secrets of the gray old man in the bank. For motivation, as well as to increase the sense of mystery among his assistants, he had printed several copies of the man's face and had taped them up around the lab. A picture of the man with the features of a squeezed lemon stared vacantly from above the computer screen at which Newton now worked.
Lothar Holz looked at the image of the bland old man with as little interest as was humanly possible for him to generate. This was a calculated indifference that he used in all sorts of business and social situations to show that he, the great Lothar Holz, was above being interested in anything. And if Lothar Holz wasn't interested in something, then it wasn't worthy of interest.
He found, in short order, that it was he in whom the scientists in this large room weren't interested.
Dr. Curt Newton, their leader, was shouting something at a group of them about proper algorithmic treatment on the neural net. It sounded like just another load of gibberish. This was common to Holz.
Since he had stolen Newton away from MIT a few years earlier to spearhead the interface project, he had been subjected to the worst kind of scientific lingo.
He had a nagging suspicion that these scientific types were just blowing smoke with a bunch of trumped-up terms. In fact, when this jargon seemed to have gotten completely out of hand early on, Holz decided to put Dr. Newton on the spot. The scientist wanted to conduct something called PET research as an adjunct to his interface study. Holz had demanded to know what the equipment was for.
'It's used for diagnostic imaging,' Newton had explained.
Lothar Holz had nodded as if he understood.
'PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography,'
Newton had said patiently. 'It gives us the chemical physiology, as well as structure of the brain.' He could see that he wasn't getting through to Holz. He spoke very slowly. 'A patient is injected with a glu-coselike substance which emits positrons. The positrons then collide with electrons to form photons. We can then detect and record the speed and path of the photons through the brain.'
Completely lost, Holz had asked gruffly, 'Is it necessary for your research?'
'Crucial.'
Newton had the PET imaging scanner the next morning.
