"Oh, you caught me," she gasped as Remo released her from his one-handed grasp. "Great reflexes. You must burn your sugar really, really fast."
"What are you talking about?" Remo demanded peevishly.
"I'll explain later. Come on. I'll show you my files. They're much more interesting than those semiliterate letters."
"If you say so."
"Can I ask you some questions?" Naomi asked as they walked down the hall.
"No."
"Who were your parents?"
"No idea. I'm an orphan."
"Really?"
"I don't remember it being all that special," he growled.
"But you could come from anywhere. I don't detect an accent."
"I was raised in Newark, New Jersey. By nuns." Naomi made a sympathetic face.
"How terrible for you."
Remo shrugged. "It wasn't so bad."
They came to the den, where concrete-block-and-plywood bookshelves held scores of volumes. A copper filing cabinet stood beside a small desk.
"Top drawer. Under H," Naomi said helpfully.
"H for what?"
"Homo crassi carpi. That's the species name for you. I devised it myself. It's Latin for 'man the thick-wristed.' Do you like it?"
"Not really. But it beats 'Dead Man.' "
"That was that horrid Enquirer person's idea. He was hopelessly ethnocentric."
"Sit and be quiet."
Naomi sat. "Where are you from?" she asked. "I mean, after Newark. My files show no clear subsistence patterns. No territorial locus,"
Remo pulled out a thick file and began leafing through closely typed pages. There were many typos. "While you're just standing here doing nothing, can I measure your cephalic index?" Naomi asked hopefully.
"What?" Remo asked without looking up.
"It will take only a second. I have a tape measure on my desk." Naomi plucked a cloth measure in her fingers and stood up. She started to loop it around Remo's forehead, but one hand came up absently and snapped it without conscious effort.
"Wow! You really do burn your sugar," she said, blinking at the two dangling lengths of calibrated cloth. "I didn't even see your hand move."
"Sit down."
Naomi sat. "Mind if I take notes?" she asked meekly.
"Just do it quietly."
Naomi began writing on a notepad. Obviously a hominid, she noted. Good posture and bipedal locomotion. Cranial development normal for a twentieth-century male. It was odd. Except for the overdeveloped wrists, there were no outwardly distinctive divergences from genus Homo sapiens. Maybe if she could get him to take off his clothes ...
Leaning closer, she got her first close look at those wrists. They were tremendously thick. A strange quality to possess. There were no muscles in the wrists to develop like that. Maybe it was a mutation. Yet the rest of him was so lean. Little body fat. He must eat very intelligently. Lots of salads.
"Tell me about your diet," Naomi prompted.
"Huh?"
"What was the last thing you ate?"
"Oranges. I stole them off a truck."
"A forager! I expected a hunter-gatherer because of your obviously nomadic migratory patterns. Do you eat meat?"
"I've been losing my taste for it."
"Just as I thought," Naomi said, scribbling on a notepad. "Excellent. Moving away from your bestial carnivore forebears. Isn't evolution grand?"
Remo looked up suddenly. "What are you babbling about?"
"I'm an anthropologist. I'm just trying to understand you."
"And I'm trying to understand these dippy reports. They have me-or someone who looks like me-running from hell and gone like a maniac. Destroying this. Breaking that."
"I've been trying to fathom your behavioral patterns. I came to the conclusion that you're trying to dismantle our stupid twentieth-century technolopolis. To pave the way for the reign of your own kind, am I right?"
"My kind?"
"Homo crassi carpi."
"Lady, I don't swing that way. Not even after twenty years on the row."
"I said 'thick-wristed,' not 'limp-wristed.' And what do you mean by 'the row'? Is that the name of your kinship group? Do you belong to some kind of ceremonial clan?"
"That's what I can't figure," Remo muttered grimly. "If this is me in these reports, how could I have been in two places at once?"
Naomi blinked. "Now I don't understand you." Remo shook the files under Naomi's narrow nose.
"I've been on death row for the last twenty years," he snapped. "I haven't been outside prison walls since I broke jail last night."
"Jail? Those fascists!"
"What fascists?" Remo said, dumbfounded.
"The government. This is obviously a government plot. They learned of your existence-you, the next stage in human evolution-and they imprisoned you unjustly. Oh, you poor Homo crassi carpi."
"Government plot?"
"Yes, this fascist regime is committed to destroying anything it doesn't understand."
"Lady, I've been doing time for killing a pusher. I didn't do it, but that's why I was doing time."
"You were framed. It all fits."
"Read my lips. I said twenty years. I've been on death row for twenty years, not running around the country with a crazy old Mongol."
"Mongoloid. And who is he? I couldn't figure him out either."
"Damned if I know. But he's dead."
"Dead?"
"At least I think so. I saw him die in a dream. It seemed as real as those other dreams, the ones where I was doing stuff like you have in these files. But I don't remember being in any of these places or doing these things. Hell, before I was sent away, I'd barely ever been out of New Jersey. Unless you count a tour in Vietnam."
Naomi Vanderkloot touched Remo's arm tenderly. "Don't try to sort it all out at once," she said. "You've been through a tremendous ordeal."
Remo slapped the files in her solicitous hands. "There's nothing in these to help me. Thanks for your time."
Naomi shot to her feet. Her eyes were pleading. "Wait! I can help you."
"Yeah, how? I'm in pretty deep."
"By offering you a place to stay for a start. Here. Then we'll help you find yourself. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Finding yourself."
"I know who I am. Remo Williams."
"And Remo Durock. And Remo DeFalco. And Remo Weeks. Don't you see? These reports can't all be coincidence. You may think you've been in jail, but someone with your face and first name has been doing all these bizarre destructive things."
"Maybe I have a twin brother," Remo suggested.
"Maybe. If so, then you and he are the same species. I want to study you. Please allow me." Naomi Vanderkloot watched the changing expressions flicker across Remo Williams' troubled face. The doubt, the confusion, oh, he was everything she'd ever wanted in a man. Or a study specimen. He was perfect.
Seeing him waver, she reached up and removed her glasses. In movies, this was always the moment when the handsome hero fell for the brainy woman who, under the glasses and schoolmarm bun, was secretly gorgeous. And passionate. She wet her lips to communicate the passionate part. And waited for his reaction.
"Can you cook?" Remo asked at last.
Naomi's face fell. She struggled to get it aloft again.
"Yes," she said bravely.
"Good. I'm starving. Got any rice?"
"As much as you want. Plain white or wild?"
"Either of 'em."
"Let's continue this in the kitchen," Naomi suggested, smiling.
In the kitchen, Naomi asked, "Care for a Dove Bar while you wait?"
"I'll shower after we eat," Remo said seriously, watching in horrified fascination as Naomi Vanderkloot took a package from the freezer marked "Dove Bar" and began nibbling.
Later, over two heaping bowls of rice, she listened to Remo Williams' life story. It was not exactly a biography. More of a hard-luck story.
"And you say you simply woke up in Florida State Prison?" she asked when he was through. "And they said you'd killed a guard?"