Remo noted a photograph on the wall. It was of a single blue tree. Large blue clumps of seeds clutched the undersides of some of the branches.
"That the farting tree?" Remo asked.
Amanda nodded. "That's one of the latest specimens. I took that myself two weeks ago."
"Huhn," Remo grunted. "Doesn't look so tough."
"It isn't," Amanda explained. "The earliest ones were felled by blight. We've created a heartier strain since then, but as with all species where there are only a handful of specimens, we have to exercise great care. Now, are you with the CCS?"
Remo shook his head. "Nope. Got all my brain cells."
"However, he has yet to use either of them," Chiun said. He stood at the door, hands tucked deep in the voluminous sleeves of his crimson kimono.
"But you were hired by the CCS," she insisted. "As security after the tragic deaths."
"Would you prefer coyness or outright lying?"
"So you weren't hired by the CCS," Amanda said carefully. She no longer feared these two, but she realized she should still exercise some caution.
"Let's just say we were hired by a friend to see that nothing happens to you," Remo said.
It hit Amanda all at once. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it before.
"Daddy!" Amanda cried. "I knew he wouldn't abandon me in my hour of need. He sent you, didn't he? He must have been keeping an eye on me all along. Isn't that right?"
Remo glanced at Chiun.
"Don't look at me," the Master of Sinanju said in Korean. "She is part of your demented race, not mine. If it keeps her from squalling, tell her whatever pretty song she wants to hear."
Remo turned back to Amanda. "Daddy sends his love," he said.
"Really?" Amanda asked. "That doesn't sound like Daddy. Must be a bear market." She looked Remo and Chiun up and down, this time with a more critical eye. "Are you two the best he could do? No offense, but you look like I could take you. Daddy's probably kept the best bodyguards for his precious Abigail. She's the perfect one, after all. She's the one with the husband and the baby. She's the one who doesn't strip at wedding receptions and insult the whole perfect Lifton family. Well, Daddy can just go die and rot in poo for all I care." She folded her arms and slumped in her chair.
"I've changed my mind. I liked her better crying," said the Master of Sinanju.
"Are you the last one left from that tree project?" Remo asked, steering her way from the topic of patricide.
"The last one who isn't in hiding, anyway. Everyone else working on the C. dioxa at the CCS is dead or vanished."
"How about those stupid trees of yours?"
"I don't like you calling them stupid," Amanda said, bristling. "They represent a great step for science."
"So has every dippy dingdong thing you eggheads have ever come up with. While you're in here making all your great steps, the rest of us schlubs wind up having to paddle through H-bombs and ten versions of Windows."
Amanda's brow sank low. "How little is Daddy paying you?" she demanded. "He must have gotten a great bargain for someone so hostile and closeminded."
"I throw that in no charge," Remo said. "Tell me, are all the trees here?"
"What kind of silly question is that? Of course they are."
"No chance anyone's transplanted some to somebody's backyard?"
"What?" Amanda asked, shocked. "Of course not. That would be suicide on a planetary scale. Who would want to do something so insane?"
"Just a guess? Maybe the guy who's killing off all the people who might be able to stop it from happening."
Amanda considered his words.
This hadn't occurred to her. She assumed that someone opposed to the project was behind the sinister goings-on here in Geneva. It had happened in the world of science before. Within the past few years vandals had been destroying genetically altered crops in particular throughout the world. She just figured this was another of those cases, brought to the extreme.
Amanda hesitated for a moment, finally shaking her head. "That's silly. Of course no one would want to do such a thing, Mr.... What's your name?"
"Forgive him the whiteness of it," Chiun interjected.
"It's Remo," Remo said, shooting a glare at Chiun.
"In Korean that translates into 'slackwit' and 'pasty,'" Chiun confided to Amanda.
"No, it doesn't," Remo said.
"It does now," Chiun insisted blandly, "Remind me to show you the Sacred Scrolls I recorded in the first months of your training."
"You're Remo and you're Chiun," Amanda said. "Remo mentioned your name in the hall." She nodded, locking the information away in her well-ordered brain. "I realize, Remo, that people like you sometimes fear scientific progress. Here at the CCS we have a great respect for the impact of science on nature. I actually helped create a new variety of C. dioxa that has a breeding capacity a thousand times greater than the original generation of plants."
"And this dispels my concerns how exactly?" Remo asked.
"Don't you see?" Amanda insisted. "It's a love of the environment that drives our research: We're draining the life from this planet. We need to develop alternatives before eco-catastrophe here destroys everything and everyone. The C. dioxa and what comes after it could hold the key to our survival. Not in the immediate future, but hundreds of years from now."
Remo was surprised. Most people in the West thought of time in Western terms-days, weeks, months. Amanda Lifton was a ditz, but she was a ditz who thought in terms of centuries.
"So what?" Remo sighed. "We'll all be dead and buried by then."
"Speak for yourself," Chiun said.
"This is how you have to think when you're talking about the environment. Bad science will tell you there are quick fixes to everything. There aren't. I've conditioned my mind to be patient. And believe me, I've had to. You know, originally the C. dioxa seeds were as big as your thumb. I was able to refine them to the size of a raisin."
"Big deal," Remo said.
"It will be for future generations," Amanda said. "When terraforming becomes a reality. My small seeds break open after just a few days on the ground, releasing hundreds of tiny seedlets that can be carried on the air. Forestation of an entire planet could take place in a few decades."
"The same true if these things get loose here?" Remo asked.
Amanda frowned. "I don't like your attitude or your insinuations," she said. "Everyone who comes to work for the CCS signs a confidentiality contract. Our work is known only to us, and we are all above reproach. No one in this organization would wish any harm to come to this planet."
"If no one outside here knows about your plant, how come I do?" Remo asked.
Amanda faltered. "Well," she said, "obviously Daddy would have his sources."
"For someone passing herself off as a brainiac, you're pretty dense," Remo said.
Amanda sat up straighter in her chair. Her dark Lifton eyes peered condescendingly down her long Lifton nose.
"I don't care where Daddy found you, I will not be spoken to in that manner. I am a Lifton and you, sir, are the hired help. What's more, you are a crude, nasty moron." She folded her arms firmly.
"This moron's your best bet at staying alive."
"And you're an imbecile," she snapped.
"Although right now the imbecile and the moron are thinking about leaving you to the wolves and heading back home."
"And you're a mean, mean, mean meanie," Amanda Lifton concluded. "And I don't know why Daddy would hire someone as nasty as you to watch out for me. He must hate me."
Somewhere in the middle, her tirade had stopped being about Remo. The tears were starting to well up in her eyes once more. Before the floodgates could fully open, and to Remo's eternal gratitude, someone chose that moment to knock on Dr. Lifton's office door.
When the man stuck his head in the room, Amanda stopped her latest outburst in midsniffle.