"Security is always of primary concern," Smith admitted. "In the case of Remo and Chiun, it is our responsibility to cover their more obvious tracks. Don't worry, Mark, about that which you cannot control."
The irony of the advice-coming as it did from a man whose life had been spent fretting over all things uncontrollable, both large and small-was not lost on Smith. But as the new man at CURE, Howard had enough on his plate without having to worry about Remo and Chiun. For now and for the foreseeable future, their idiosyncrasies and the problems they sometimes presented would rest squarely on the shoulders of CURE's director.
Smith leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk once more. "Next item," he announced efficiently.
And with that, Harold Smith and Mark Howard returned to the mundane work of preserving American democracy.
Chapter 7
When the entity that had assumed control of the Virgil probe remained silent for three whole days, Pete Graham was afraid some Y2K glitch had fried its processors.
Graham had been stonewalling the brass the whole time even as he tried to hack into the systems he had helped create. He was almost certain the millennium bug had claimed its first real victim when, upon entering his lab on the morning of the fourth day, he encountered a disconcerting sight.
Virgil had sprouted an eye.
The humanlike orb sat about three inches above the mouth and favored toward the right. He noted that the microcamera on the head of the probe had disappeared.
"Oh, my," Graham whispered. Cautiously, he approached Virgil.
The eye was white with a blue iris and looked as if it could have been plucked from a human head. When he got close enough to it, the eye shifted in his direction.
"Hello is all right," Mr. Gordons said.
Even before the metal mouth moved, Graham felt his spinal fluid turn cold. The eye was by far the creepiest thing he had ever seen. Far worse than the mouth.
"Are you ...okay?" Graham asked.
"I am functioning at eighty-three percent," Gordons replied. "It appears that there are elements of my original programming that were too damaged to be repaired, some even before my last encounter with my enemies. However, I believe that I have compensated for the deficiency. I have taken the last sixty-nine point three eight hours to fully integrate the technology of the Virgil probe into my own operating systems. Everything that your probe was, I now am."
"That's ...great," said Graham, clearly not quite sure if it actually was.
"The technology I have assimilated is far superior to that of the LC-111 computer. I have purged that data from my system, thus freeing up space. I am much more efficient. Thank you, Doctor."
"Don't mention it," Graham said, his brow furrowed. "Did you say the LC-111?" He seemed to remember this as some sort of NASA computer that had disappeared years before.
"Yes," Mr. Gordons replied. "That particular piece of technology was assimilated on 02.08.82. Furthermore, I now understand that this acquisition could not have taken place in 1882." A hint of a smile. "You will be pleased to know that I am now fully Y2K compliant."
In spite of the uneasy feeling Mr. Gordons's lone eye gave him, Graham felt a tingle of excitement. "Good. I'm glad, Vir-" The scientist caught himself. "Mr. Gordons," he corrected. He clapped his hands. "Okay, what say we do some down-and-dirty work for science?"
Grabbing up his laptop, he went into a half-squat on the stool next to the big probe. His rump hadn't touched metal before the probe's mouth opened.
"No," Gordons said. "I must leave this place. I have done all I can to maximize my survival here. To remain only increases my risk of discovery by my enemies. Therefore I must go."
"But-but ...you can't leave," Graham spluttered.
"There is zero probability that you will be capable of stopping me," Mr. Gordons replied. And with that there came a squeaking from below his thorax.
The Virgil probe rose high on its eight legs and promptly began walking toward the door.
If Graham thought the image of the eye in the front of Virgil's thorax was creepy, the sight of the probe walking as it never had before-in a flawless parody of a spider's crawl-was absolutely bone chilling.
When Virgil reached the door, Graham was startled to see that one of its legs had re-formed into something resembling a human hand. With an impossible delicacy that would have made any robotics engineer weep, the leg reached out and opened the lab door.
The probe pulled in its legs like four sets of broad shoulders and skittered on tiptoe out into the hallway.
Graham bounded out after it. "Wait!" he begged.
When the probe ignored him and continued down the corridor, the scientist latched on to a leg. He was dragged a few yards before the leg shook him off. Graham rolled roughly into a wall.
Its clattering legs crawling in perfect concert, the spider-shaped probe darted around a corner. It had no sooner disappeared than Graham heard a familiar startled voice.
"What in the devil's own blue blazer is going on here?" Colonel Zipp Codwin's disembodied voice bellowed.
Scampering to his feet, Pete Graham raced around the corner. He found the Virgil probe standing stockstill in the middle of the floor. Before the metal creature stood the head of NASA. Codwin's granitehewed face was intensely displeased as he stared down the runaway robot.
"What's this thing doing running around out here?" NASA's chief administrator demanded the instant a very frazzled Pete Graham appeared around the corner.
"Just a standard shakedown," Graham offered weakly.
The NASA administrator was barely listening. He had just noticed something different on the probe. "Good gravy, what did you do to it?" Zipp Codwin demanded.
He was staring at the eye. He got the eerie feeling that the eye was staring back.
"I, um, was just tinkering. Fixing it. You know." Codwin took a pen from his pocket and tapped the cap against the eye. It clicked.
"That is the goddamn creepiest thing I've ever seen," he snarled at Graham. "I want the new faster, better, cheaper NASA to inspire kids to shoot for the moon, not make them piss their goddamn beds. Rip that thing out of there."
"I do not require human maintenance," announced a voice at Colonel Codwin's shoulder.
When he turned to see the man brave enough to dare contradict him-the man who was about to get his ass kicked from here to next Christmas morning-he found no one.
Only the Virgil probe.
It was then he noticed the mouth.
"Jesus, Mary and Saint Jehoshaphat's ears, what the hell have you done to this thing?" Zipp gasped. There was no sense in lying. Graham took a deep breath.
"He's not just the Virgil probe anymore, sir," the scientist stated. And rather than dwell on what it might mean to his career, he blurted out the whole story. From the discovery of the silver orb by the Virgil probe in the Mexican volcano to the events of the past three days.
When he was through, Codwin looked the young man up and down with an expression he generally reserved for mental patients, small children and the House Finance Committee.
"Great Galloping Grapefruit, man," the colonel said, aghast, "have you been smoking your goddamn Tang?"
The response came not from Graham, but from Virgil.
"Dr. Graham has not ingested any carcinogenic materials during the period of time I have spent in his laboratory."
Codwin wheeled on the Virgil. "How did you-?"
He spun back to Graham. "How did it know I was gonna say that?" he demanded of the scientist.
"He didn't," Graham explained. "He heard you and responded accordingly. I swear to you he's more than just an ordinary probe now."
Codwin turned back to Virgil.
The lips were curled into the slightest of smiles. It was all calculation. There was no emotion behind it. "Is this true?" he asked the probe point-blank. Colonel Codwin almost jumped out of his skin when the lips answered.