And there were two access roads that were opened wide. Or so it seemed. But the roads were wired and if cars didn't stop when ordered to by someone who appeared to be a forest ranger but was really a Paldor agent, the road would suddenly open up at a specified point, leaving two ditches in front and in back of any car which refused to stop.
The slope of the hill housed another electrical system that picked up urine odors of any human body. It had been developed in Vietnam. And all the surrounding hills were cabined by people who appeared to be just vacationers when in reality they were Paldor agents.
The illusion was that Ernest Walgreen's country cabin was a country cabin, instead of an electronic trap. It worked on the assassin's mind so that when he saw Walgreen puttering around in his garden from a nearby hill, he would think: I can kill that man just by driving up and putting a bullet in him. I can kill that man anytime I want. And I'd better do it now because he'll never be so open again.
Now if some assassin had a rifle on that nearby hill, a woman fixing her fence would tap an electronic signal and the assassin would not only fail
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to get off a shot but would in all likelihood end up with a bullet himself.
There was no way, Walgreen realized, that anyone could reach him and he was sorry he had not had this earlier so Mildred could share this safety with him. The pine cabin was protected from every angle of approach. And on August fifth, as the heat crossed the great American plains backing the midwest, the foundation of the cabin rose. And when the temperature hit 92 degrees, a very volatile explosive, waiting in the foundation since spring, spread the house in one very loud bang across the Sun Valley recreation area.
Along with its sole occupant, Ernest Walgreen.
In Washington, this matter was called to the attention of the President of the United States. An Annapolis graduate and a physicist, he was not about to be panicked.
"Murder seems like a local crime," he said.
"It's not just murder, sir," said his aide in a thick Southern drawl, so syrupy most Northerners drummed their fingers waiting for the man to get through the vowels and on to those rare consonants Southerners occasionally allowed to enter their speech.
"What is it then?" asked the President.
"It was an assassination that might be a warning for us. We believe it is."
"Then give it to the Secret Service. They're responsible for my protection. I'm fairly certain this man didn't have as good protection as I do and besides, assassination is always with a President of this country. It's part of the job."
"Well, sir, this isn't just any old assassination,
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You see, sir, it wasn't that he had worse protection that you. The Secret Service tells us he had better. And the people who killed him . . . well, they say you're next, sir."
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CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and he was exercising. Not the way a high school coach would exercise a team did this man exercise. He did not push muscles or strain ligaments or drive his wind to the breaking point so that the breaking point would be farther back next time. Straining and pushing were things long past, only dim remembrances of how other men used their bodies incorrectly.
Nothing fighting itself ever worked to its utmost. But that which did what was attuned to itself was the most effective it could be. A blade of grass growing and reaching for light could crack concrete. A mother, not reminding herself she was a woman and therefore incapable of strength, could-to save her baby-lift the rear end of an automobile off the ground. Water falling with gravity cut through rock.
To be most powerfully human required divesting oneself of that which was most human, a pure undiluted thought. And Kemo was one with himself as he moved out smoothly and his body, with the snap of his toes extended out and restful with the gravity, let the forty-five feet of air be-
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tween him and the sidewalk below take him down from the building ledge.
There were forces that acted on the body in free-falling flight, that if one allowed fear-triggered adrenalin to dominate, could crush the bones of the body as it collided with the pavement.
What one had to do was to be able to coordinate the meeting with the pavement ... to make the fall slower at the bottom.
It would not be really slower, any more than baseballs pitched to the great hitter Ted Williams were slower than those pitched to anyone else. But Ted Williams could see the stitches on the pitched baseballs and therefore could hit the ball with his bat more easily.
Remo, whose last name had also been Williams a long time ago but was no relation to the ballplayer, also slowed things down by becoming faster with his mind, the most powerful human organ but the one used least by most people. Less than eight percent of the human brain was ever used. It had become almost a vestigial organ.
If men ever learned to use that mind, they would, like Remo-his hands extended now before him-catch the world on the sidewalk, compress it back up so that there was no sudden push on the body, but only a minutely accurate division of stress, until ... no more. No stress and back up on feet and look around. Salamander Street, Los Angeles. Empty sidewalk, just daybreak in Watts.
Remo picked up the two twenty-five cent pieces that had fallen out of his pocket and looked around for more change. Early morning was always quiet in black neighborhoods, a special
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nothing-doing time of day, where if you wanted you could do compression dives off buildings and no one would go running around saying:
"Hey, did you see that guy do that? Did you see what I saw?"
Remo was six feet tall with high cheekbones and dark eyes that had an electric cool about them. He was thin and only his extraordinarily thick wrists might indicate that here was something other than the normal decaying flesh most men allow their bodies to become.
There had been high dives by people without full body control, but they used foam and inflated giant pillows to absorb the smack crack of forty-eight feet so that the material, not the diver, controlled the impact.
They also lacked control of their organs, assuming the intestines and liver acted like independent planets. Considering what foulness they consumed for energy and how they breathed, they were fortunate that cells were allowed to control themselves. If the people had done it, they would hardly have lived to reach puberty.
Remo looked back at the building.
Exercise now had become a re-realization of what his body was and what he did and thought and breathed. The flat slap of a soft rubber tire hobbled through a pothole two blocks down. A yellow car with a light on top indicating a cab for hire slowly came up the street.
Remo waved at him. He had to get back to the hotel. He could run it but he did not need the running, and if he should be fortunate enough to luck into a cab at this hour and this place, why not?
Remo waited as the cab came close. There were important things to do that morning. Upstairs
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had come up with a new wrinkle. Remo could never follow the code words and always ended up snarling at middle-aged Dr. Harold W. Smith:
"If you can say it, say it. If not, don't. I'm not going to piddle around with letters and numbers and dates. If you want to play with yourself, feel free. But this code nickypoo is the pits."
Smith, who to the outside world ran a sanitarium called Folcroft on Long Island Sound, was in the west to deliver personally something he had been unable to say in code on the telephone. The few words Remo had understood meant that it had to do with the new President and some safety measure. Smith was to be at the hotel for exactly ten minutes and out again, under the rather workable and usually successful theory that if there is something that is dangerous, one should do it as quickly as possible. Don't give disaster a lot of operating time.