"What is it, Smitty?" asked Remo with real care. He leaned forward in his seat. He respected Smith. He respected his integrity and his competence. He just found working for him very difficult, because the man was normally cold beyond reason.
This time, Smith seemed distracted.
"Excuse me, I haven't slept for days. What appalls me is the utter senselessness of it, the purposelessness of it," said Smith.
"Lots of things are crazy, Smitty," Remo said.
"Yes. Crazy people doing crazy things. But what happens when you have scientists, backed by what appears to be enormous wealth, all dedicated to the most gigantic act of vandalism I have ever seen? It can destroy everything valuable in the world."
"Just relax," Remo said, and then put a hand on the other man's chest and worked the spine with the other hand, enabling Smith's breath to work for him instead of against him. "Just breathe the way you feel. Just let the breath go. Let it go."
The tension eased out of the parched lemony face, and a settling calm came with the deep breathing.
"That's better than a tranquilizer, Remo. How did you do it?"
"Your essence turned on itself," explained Chiun.
"I don't understand your techniques, Master of Sinanju," said Smith.
Chiun said to Remo in Korean, "Whites never do."
"All right," Smith said. "This is what we have. Our computers are integrated with computers all over the world, a network of interlocking systems that we can pull information from."
"I don't understand that stuff too well," Remo said.
"Imagine a gigantic feeder system with components integrated," Smith said.
"Ah, so," said Chiun, who Remo knew understood even less than he.
Smith said, "Our computers pick up and analyze 32
things according to predetermined patterns. Things to look for. Just as a hunter will pick up trails or a cat can sense a leaf rustling. Our computers do the same, especially through movements of money. And one of the computers picked up a massive amount of money being rolled into a corporation called Puressence."
"An evil name if ever there was one," Chiun said.
"We tapped into Puressence and literally stole a payroll. They had on it a collection of scientists all from one area, and automatically the computer did another rundown, and we found out that scientists in that field who didn't go to work for Puressence were being systematically murdered over this past year. That field is the new fast-breeder bacteria. The bacteria created to consume oil spills."
Smith paused to let the fact sink in.
"Please don't panic, Smitty, but I just don't see the problem," said Remo.
"The problem is absolutely clear," Chiun said. "The dangerous fast-breeder bacteria can destroy everything valuable in the world."
"That's right," said Smith, happily surprised. Chiun usually did not understand American matters.
Remo looked quizzically at Chiun, and in Korean Chiun said to him, "Pretend this is important. Look how worried Smith is. Nod your head and just repeat what he says as though you think it is vital. See how much better he feels now that you seem to share his senseless panic."
Remo shook his head.
"Smitty, I don't understand."
"Maybe Chiun can explain better," Smith said.
"No, no, my Emperor. Your words ring like bells of crystal compared to my meager utterances," Chiun said. "Please proceed."
"Originally, these bacteria were designed to clean up oil spills. They would feast on the oil spills in the ocean and clean them up. But it was all slow and expensive, and they never could really get a bacterium powerful enough for the really big spills."
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"That I can follow. So what's the problem?" "The problem came with the solution. Scientists created a bacterium that, while it fed on the oil, also reproduced itself. They started experimenting with bacteria that bred faster and faster until they had one that reproduced itself every thirty seconds if it had enough petroleum to feed on. And that was bad enough, but they came up with a fast breeder that was anaerobic."
"Anaerobic," shrieked Chiun. "The merciless fiends." And then, because he did not understand the word, he asked Remo what anaerobic meant. Remo thought he knew. It sounded like something to do with exercise, but he wasn't sure.
"In case you don't know, Remo," Smith said, "anaerobic means without oxygen. This new fast-breeder bacterium does not need oxygen to function. It can breed and consume petroleum without using air. And that was the last step."
"Smitty, what are we getting at?"
"We're getting at the probable end of civilization as we know it," said Smith.
"The fiends," said Chiun.
"How?" asked Remo.
•Through anaerobic, of course," said Chiun.
"Exactly," said Smith. "You see, Remo, Chiun has seen that this rapid-breeder bacterium can remove all the oil in the world. It can feed underground on all our oil deposits. No oil, no gas, no plastics, no industry."
"If somebody goes around to all the wells and drops in this stuff," said Remo. "But obviously they're not going to because then they couldn't shake down the oil industry, right? Someone's threatening to use this stuff to shake down the oil barons, right?"
"I wish that were the case. Then they could just be paid off. And the price increased at the pumps. No. What our computers ultimately picked up was financial backing flowing in fast enough to allow anaerobic fast-breeder bacteria to be reproduced on a scale grand enough to remove the world's energy. We would be violently thrown back to a world without planes or cars
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or plastics or hospitals or anything we have come to know as civilization."
Chiun nodded gravely, but to Remo he said in Korean, "Then what is the problem?"
Remo answered that the problem was the destruction of almost everything he and Smith loved. Chiun answered that he didn't see that as a problem, he saw tEat as a solution. He thought the Western world had created too many amateur assassins. Now, that was a problem.
"So somebody is going to remove all the world's oil deposits," said Remo. "And everything else has failed to stop him, right? Okay. Where is this Puressence?"
"It's a box number in Delaware. We thought we located its real headquarters, but then we lost it. Right now, it seems to have an ability to hide itself in computer systems. But we know that's impossible because somebody has got to be behind the computer. Somebody has got be profiting from this. But the nerve-shattering fact is we don't know how. We have no reason for anyone to want all the world's oil energy to be removed."
And then Remo fully understood what had so unnerved Smith, the straight-spine, pure-soul cold pillar of probity. It was that underneath this impending disaster, there was no reason for it.
Smith had realized he might be facing massive destruction just on someone's whim. And he didn't know how to fight whims.
"I am sure there's a rationale behind this," Remo reassured Smith. "Somebody wants to enslave somebody else or make some enormous profit or something. We just haven't figured it out yet."
"I hope so," Smith said. "We don't know why he is doing what he is doing. But we do know what. And we do know where he would have to strike again."
It was Smith's theory that this enemy had removed all scientists in that particular area of bacterial research so that there would be no one left to come up with a formula to combat the rapid-breeder bacteria. Smith
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was sure that if two scientists appeared at a university with credentials as scientists in bacteria research, whoever was behind this looming world disaster would have to come at those two. The two would be Remo and Chiun. "Don't sweat, Smitty," Remo said. "Once he reaches out a hand at us, we'll take it off."
"That's not what worries me. What worries me is that if anyone at the Massachusetts University of Technology should recognize that you are not scientists, whoever is behind this thing will simply ignore you and go safely about destroying the industrial world. It's not your killing ability that's going to be tested here but, I am afraid, your knowledge of science."