And he brooded. Here he was, on the verge of scamming himself into the presidency of the United States of America, and he was too afraid to leave his hotel room. Those assassins were his ticket to glory and the bane of his existence. Why couldn’t Fastbinder and his idiot-genius kid kill them already!
Fastbinder finally called.
“I gotta get out of here, Jacob,” Whiteslaw barked.
“There is a problem.”
Whiteslaw didn’t like the sound of that. “Don’t tell me you missed them again.”
“You have lied to us from zee very beginning about these assassins and what they can do.”
“We’ve been through this and through this, Jacob.”
“You never told us they could walk up zee walls, Senator.”
“What?”
“You never explained that zees men punch through brick walls with bare hanz.” Fastbinder’s accent always became more pronounced when he became excited. “Also, Senator, zee assassins are adapting to zee weapons we used on them.”
“So you missed,” Whiteslaw accused.
“If a Tomcat fighter plane fails to shoot down zee B-2 stealth bomber, would you say zee Tomcat missed? No. It was eluded by a great untzophisticated foe. Just so, we were outmaneuvered by superior cababiliteez. What else did you not tell us. Senator?”
“I told you all I knew from the start. Remember my telling you how the young one ripped the door off a limo and threw guys around like softballs. I never said I knew their limits. How would I know they could walk up walls, huh? The point is, your brat’s traps didn’t work—am I right?”
“Wrong. Jack’s traps did work, but zee assassins got around them. They destroyed zee last of zee large proton-discharge devices, but zee devices had negligible effect because zee assassins shielded themselves some way. We are back at square one.”
Whiteslaw should have been afraid, but he was just angry. “That idiot kid had the one weapon that would work and instead of killing those assholes at the very start he gave ’em just enough of it to teach them how to adapt.”
“Do you know what Jack thinks?” Fastbinder asked sardonically. “Zat these assassins are using something other than technology. He says they use some sort of highly enhanced human skills.”
“Like superpowers?”.
“Yes.”
“Like Batman?”
“Exactly, like Batman.”
“Fastbinder, your kid’s an idiot. I don’t know why you let him call the shots.”
Coldly, Fastbinder replied, “It is I who call zee shotz.”
“Who you trying to kid? That brat’s working you like a puppet. Lord knows why you let him do it. Take a look around you, Jacob. Who’s the real worm king, huh? Who’re the cavemen really afraid of? It ain’t you.”
“Senator—”
“Hey, Fastbinder, I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make those assassins dead. If you fail again, our cooperative relationship is dissolved.”
Whiteslaw felt good about the threat, and about the cold silence that followed. He had what he needed to spin the political parties into decades of chaos if they didn’t give him what he wanted. And once he was President, Fastbinder needed him as an ally. They both knew it.
“They will be dead in twenty-four hours,” Fastbinder stated.
“I have your word?” Whiteslaw demanded.
“You haff my word. I will see to it perzonally.”
Chapter 41
“Why the long face, Pops?” Jack asked.
“Whiteslaw is showing his fangs,” Fastbinder said acidly. “He called you stupid for believing our assassins have supertalents, and he called me stupid for putting my trust in you. I am beginning to think he is right. You are only a boy. I’ve given you entirely too much leeway.”
“A boy? Gee, Pop, you could at least call me a young man, or even a teenager.”
“Sometimes you act like a young man, and sometimes you act like a little boy. You are a brilliant boy, but I have seen enough of your mistakes and missteps to know that you lack the wisdom that comes with age, Jack. Zee assassins are not Batmans.”
Jack laughed, short and haughty. “Batman didn’t have superpowers, Pop.”
“I don’t care. It is make-believe.”
“Maybe there are people out there with abilities that are different from ours, Pops, ever think of that?” Jack demanded.
“Hogwash.”
“Hey, Pops, look at something for me.” Jack snatched at the curtain on the chiseled window and stabbed a finger at the toiling albinos in the central court of the emerging city. “Those cave people were just like us until a few generations ago, and look how much they devolved. They think you and me have superpowers, right? So how can you say there’s not another bunch of people who are further evolved than us?”
Fastbinder shook his head tightly. “The Albinoids are not devolved, Jack, just degraded. They’re genetically zee same as us.”
“Okay, fine, so they were normal humans and then they degraded. So maybe somebody else was a normal human and then they advanced—and maybe they had something that helped them advance.”
“Jack, you are in a fantasy. Zee assassins do not have superpowers. We are all just people, zee Albinoids, us and zee assassins. Some of us simply have better brains.” Fastbinder stalked to the door, waving down Jack before the teenager could speak again. “It is time for you to grow up. Jack.”
Chapter 42
“We should never have breathed life back into them,” Chiun said.
“No kidding.” Remo caught a female captive under one arm and reached for the scummy-looking man whose pores oozed nicotine. The scummy guy was making a high-pitched siren sound, but it stopped when Remo paralyzed them both.
“This is for your own good,” Remo told the middle-aged woman who was trying to scramble up the walls.
“You can’t make me go back in there!”
“You stay here and you’ll starve to death,” Remo pointed out. “There’s no other way out.”
“I’d rather die!”
“That’s just the terror talking,” Remo said reasonably. He stepped up onto her rock—the rock she had climbed for two minutes to reach. She goggled at him. “How’d you—”
“There, there.” He paralyzed her and leaped down to the landing with her slumped on one shoulder, then inserted her into one of the sockets in the watercraft pod. It was the least damaged of the three salvaged pods. They wouldn’t use the other pods. After all, there were only eight survivors. The neat row of nonsurvivors stretched across the back wall of the cavern where they had landed.
“If you intend to send the other floating prisons into the river as a decoy, then these bodies should be placed into them,” Chiun pointed out.
“Keep your voice down, will ya?” Remo said. “You know what Fastbinder will do with the ones that arrive dead?”
“Feed them to his subjects,” Chiun said with a shrug. “Shh!” Remo hissed, but it was too late. The paralyzed captives were practically having seizures with their eyeballs. “Nice goin’, Chiun.”
“Fastbinder will be suspicious of the disappearance of the captives when the decoy pods arrive empty. But it is you who is Reigning Master. Naturally, I accede to your authority,” Chiun sniffed.
“Which is your way of saying this is gonna be a real disaster and you want me to look like the moron instead of you. What’s so hilarious?”
“Remo,” Chiun said, wearing a smirk, “I could never look like a moron, and you never couldn’t.”
Remo rolled his eyes and stepped into Pod Two, weaving his arms and finally bellowing, “Hey!”