Every batch so far had technically worked. The formula he was searching for-the perfect formula-would be the one without side effects.
The original formula of GUTX, derived from nature, had no side effects. But there was no more natural source. Grom had one alternative only: a synthesis. It had cost him serious cash to have certain laboratories synthesize versions of GUTX, none of which perfectly replicated the natural substance. They were close, but, so far, not close enough.
Tonight he was taking a different approach to his suggestion-making, too. All positive statements. Have fun! Be happy!
Greg Grom had not even reached the door when he heard the sounds of violence. A stomp dancer had been jettisoned off a raised section of the dance floor into a table below.
A livid couple stomped off the lower-level dance floor. "You spilled my beer!" screeched the plump young woman. "His, too!" she added before her plump young boyfriend could add his two cents' worth. They started stomping all over the offending beer-spiller.
Their victim twisted free of the bruising boots just long enough to stab one finger viciously skyward. "'Twarn't me!" the poor man yelped. "Johnny Ogden throwed me!"
Suddenly the plump couple and their heavily stomped victim were at peace with one another and forged an instant alliance against a common enemy.
"Johnny Ogden, you sheep-fucking son of a swine!" The woman had a piercing quality that cut through the disco-country soundtrack. Everybody looked at her. Nobody stopped stomping. The fallen man, one arm hanging limp, struggled to his feet and even he resumed stomping.
Oops, Grom thought. He'd suggested something about dancing all night long, hadn't he? And this was what these people called dancing.
The music stopped. The stomp dancing continued, but it was now the march of soldiers into battle, filling the vast saloon with the clomp-clomp rhythm.
The woman and her pair of male followers stomped up the ramp to the upper-level dance floor.
Other patrons stomped out of their way.
The plump young woman stomped at a big stomping man that could only be Johnny Ogden.
Greg Grom noticed the bartender. The only non stamper in the place. He was punching numbers into a cell phone and looking frantic. Calling the cops. Time to go, Grom decided.
The bartender looked right at him.
Grom's heart sank.
The guy would remember him. Recognize him. He would be lucid enough to give the cops a description. That would ruin everything.
Grom felt foolish. But he couldn't stop to berate himself now.
He had to solve the problem. "Stop!" he shouted.
They stopped fighting, Johnny Ogden and his three attackers. Everybody in the bar turned to Greg Grom, still stomping. The grinned and waved at their good friend, the guy who bought them the beer.
"Johnny Ogden is not a bad man." Grom declared. "Johnny Ogden is your friend! But there is someone else here who is the enemy! Someone you all hate!"
The stomping grew furious as fifty-three enraged beer-swillers craned their necks, trying to find the enemy. "Who?" squealed the plump lady. "Who is it?"
"It is-" he paused, just for the drama "-the bartender!"
The bartender looked stricken. He didn't understand why this was happening, but suddenly, with perfect clarity, he knew how it was going to end.
Grom left as the stomping became deadly.
He pulled out his little black book. With regret, he found the entry for that night's batch and penned in next to it, "Imperfect."
Chapter 9
The quartet of sky marshals scowled at Remo Williams. They scowled at the nervous young lady at the checkin desk. They scowled meaningfully to one another to make it appear they knew what was going down.
But they didn't have a clue.
"You sure there's no problem here?" the head sky marshal asked the airline ticket puncher for the third time.
"They say everything is fine," she protested.
"What about the complaints?"
"The passengers issued an apology through a spokesman," she explained reluctantly.
"Since when do a bunch of passengers have a spokesman?" the sky marshal demanded.
"I guess they're traveling together," she said. "A tour group from Paris."
Uh-oh, thought Remo, who now had an inkling as to what was going on aboard the 737 that had just landed. Its pilot had relayed a passenger-disturbance complaint minutes before landing. That brought the sky marshals in a hurry, but after the aircraft landed the pilot called back to say the complaint had been retracted. The sky marshals weren't buying any "retraction."
"Let me get this straight;" the head sky marshal said to the ticket puncher. "This tour group issues a complaint against another passenger and asks for law enforcement. Then the passenger apologizes, so the Paris tour group says no hard feelings and expects us to just drop it?"
The ticket puncher seemed to shrink into herself. "Not exactly, Officer."
"Marshal."
"Not exactly, Marshal. From what I understand, the Paris tour group apologized to the passenger. You know, the one they issued the complaint about."
"Well, why'd the bejeezus they do that?"
Remc knew the answer. The answer strode out of the debarking door, scowling. The scowl became worse by degrees when Remo approached.
"Bad flight, Little Father?"
"Do you know what was on that flight, Remo? Can you possibly guess?"
"Hmm. When you screw your face up that tight, it's got to be, oh, French?"
"Yes!" Chiun exclaimed, pleased to share his outrage. "They spent the entire flight behaving like French. They spoke French. They smelled French. I was harassed for hours."
"It's a fifty-minute flight."
"They gave me no peace. They insulted me in their hideous tongue, thinking I could not understand their meaning. It was a mob of uncivilized nonbathers against a frail but hygienic elderly man. I was on the verge of being physically assaulted."
"You were lucky, I guess."
"Excuse me," asked the sky marshal, "where are the rest of the passengers?"
"There was some trouble with the lavatories after landing, Marshal," Chiun said, croaking out the words like the weak, failing senior citizen he wasn't. "Apparently a great many of them became wedged in the lavatory cubicles."
"Oh, my Gad!" the sky marshal said. "How did that happen?"
Chiun looked at the floor, a sad and pathetic old man. "They are French. Who can say with the French?"
CHIUN THE ELDERLY, Chiun the Frail, Chiun the Dying became Chiun the Obstinate when he was informed that he was to board another aircraft at once. His wrist bones, as brittle as sun-dried pine needles, nearly broke when the old Korean master illustrated his displeasure by backhanding the motorized cart that had just transported them to a two-engine prop plane.
The airport staffer on the cart knew his little putt-putt vehicle couldn't possibly go as fast as it was suddenly going, and it sure the hell couldn't do it in reverse. He was still trying to figure all this out a half second later when the cart stopped against the protective concrete pillar at the base of the airport gate. It was hours before he thought about anything again.
"Do you have my trunks?" Chiun demanded.
"Yes. The Reigning Master of Sinanju is faithfully jockeying all six of your trunks."
"The Master of Sinanju Emeritus expects no less," Chiun replied with an off-hand wave. "See that they are not scratched."
"They're not scratched," Remo said.
"You handle them irreverently," Chiun complained.
"Hey, you were lucky I grabbed those things just when you were sending the poor driver halfway across the tarmac. They'd have been scratched and dinged and who-knows-what all."
"Dinged?" Chiun stopped on the third step up into the charter plane. "You shall not allow my trunks to be dinged, or scritched or danged or any other thing."