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.
'Quite probably,' von Breslau agreed.
Newton took a seat at the same monitor station Mervin Fischer had worked from the previous day.
He absently hooked his feet around its metal legs.
'Fischer eliminated temporal junk from the program. All limbic stuff. What we're working with is a distillation of his physical attributes alone.'
'Have you raised the dopamine level?'
'There's a precursor to the main file that will trick his basal ganglia into elevating the level of dopamine.'
'You should monitor ATP, as well.'
'I'm not taking any chances.' Newton tapped away at the keyboard. 'I'm pushing everything else up, too. ATP, serotonin, acetylcholine. Everything.
Fischer didn't have sense enough there. Bright guy when it came to programming, but a bit of a neo-phyte with the rest of the interface system. His failure to chemically compensate might explain the reaction he got.' He entered a final command. 'I'm ready.'
'Have you set your machines to deliver the information slowly?'
'I've increased the download time by a factor of four. If it becomes necessary to slow it any further, I can break in manually.'
Von Breslau seemed satisfied. 'Proceed,' he said.
Newton glanced over to the spot where the bodies had been. They were gone. He had no idea where Holz's assistant had hidden them. The light brown patch on the floor where Fischer's blood had stained could have been caused by a spilled cup of coffee.
Newton took a deep breath and tapped out
'Copy' on his keyboard.
Erich von Breslau stared at their test subject, an expectant, avaricious expression on his features.
Exhaling loudly, Newton hit the Enter key.
In the hallway one floor above, the Master of Sinanju felt the electrical signal switch on.
It was different than it had been. Not as far-reaching. More concentrated. But though the signal was faint, it remained distinctive.
Chiun didn't hesitate. Black sandals slid in confident silence along the drab grey hallway carpeting.
Moving swiftly, he headed back down the corridor to the elevators.
A guard intercepted him before he reached the end. 'Hold it, old-timer,'' the man said. A hand snaked cautiously to his hip holster.
'Out of my way, lout. I am on important innerfaze business.'
'Are you?' the guard said skeptically. 'Then you might be interested to know we've had a security breach. We found two of our people unconscious in the parking lot. Both of them were missing their security passes.'
'That is not my concern,' Chiun spit. 'As you can see, I still possess my special identification.'
'You're Stella Tresaloni?' the guard said. He indicated Chiun's laminated security tag. A woman's smiling face beamed out from the corner of the pass.
Chiun didn't have time to deal with niggling details. He left the unconscious guard behind an empty receptionist's desk and raced for the elevator.
'Cut the speed in half.'
'Already?'
'Do as I say,' von Breslau commanded. He watched their test subject carefully. 'How do you feel?'
The man's shoulders lifted in a bored shrug. 'I don't know. Kind of a little tingly, I guess. Is this going to take much longer?'
The two scientist ignored him.
'I've reduced the rate by half,' Newton said.
'Chemical production has adjusted accordingly.'
'His heart rate is elevated. Skin tone flushed.'
'That isn't unusual.'
'No.' The German thoughtfully steepled his fingers, then ordered, 'Increase by a quarter. Slowly.'
Newton made the adjustments. Fischer's program informed him on the computer screen that there was a slight dip in the level of adenosine triphosphate. In the time it took to relate the message, the computer had compensated for the change.
The computer downloaded through the interface program for nearly another minute. Von Breslau stood beside the test subject throughout.
At last he held up a hand. 'Let us stop here for a moment.'
'Already?' Newton asked. He sounded disappointed.
'Shut down your machine.'
Reluctantly Newton did so. He went over to the man and removed the electrodes from his forehead.
He had been so engrossed in his work he hadn't noticed the change in the EKG. The normal spikes that were present when he had begun monitoring had dropped. There were no more of the rough triangular shapes. There was now a serene waviness to the line.
Like a gently rolling sea. He pulled the electrodes from the man's chest
4'Pick that up, please,' von Breslau said to Newton. There was a heavy steel crowbar lying on the floor near the gurney. Holz had borrowed it from the gar-deners earlier. It was a five-foot-long rod they used for prying up rocks or stumps on the grounds.
The tool was much heavier than it looked. Newton grunted as he hefted it from the floor.
Von Breslau looked down at the man on the gurney. 'I want you to bend this, if you would be so kind.'
'Are you out of your mind?' the man said. He glanced at Newton. The scientist's face showed intense strain from holding the bar.
In return, von Breslau smiled tightly. 'Please humor an old man.'
The man shrugged. 'This is crazy,' he said. He reached out and took the bar from Newton. And almost bowled the scientist over. He wrenched the bar out of Newton's hands, lifting it high in the air.
'What the—? This thing's light as a feather.'
He lowered the heavy bar and took it in one hand, rolling it from palm to fingertips. The truth was, it felt
