“Absolutely,” Mark Howard said. “Totally different profile. It used some sort of electrical discharge to tunnel into the earth. The earth drill you saw operated mechanically.”
Remo was relieved. When he broke something, he liked it to stay broken. It was a self-confidence thing. “So where’d they come from?”
“Unknown,” Smith said. “We can assume they were based outside the Fastbinder home adjacent to his Museum of Mechanical Marvels, or were simply absent when you and Chiun paid your call.”
“Coleslaw’s behind it,” Remo declared.
Smith made a sour humph sound. “Senator Whiteslaw is likely involved in some way with the new Fastbinder threat, although not active in the field. Remo, I’ll be the first to say your instincts were on target about Whiteslaw. CURE should have given him a higher priority.”
“CURE did give him higher priority. I’m a part of CURE, remember? It was you who downplayed it, Smitty.”
“Very gracious, dimwit,” said a quiet, high-pitched voice from the direction of the television.
“Please give me a full report on your activities at the waste site,” Smith said.
Remo complied, keeping his smart remarks to a minimum and feeling like a jerk. When he was done. Smith and Howard could be heard snapping at their keyboards like dueling pianists. Remo wondered if they had touch-typing races on slow days.
“You gave us a lot to chew on,” Howard remarked. “Do you have any idea where these albinos originated? Who they are, how long they’ve been down, anything?”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“Remo, were their eyelids actually grown together, or were they simply naturally closed?” Smith asked.
“Uh, grown together. Why?”
“That indicates these people have spent more than a generation belowground. That, and their lack of oratory skills. It’s as if they’re reverting to an animal state.”
“You have an idea why they’d go subterranean in the first place?”
Mark Howard spoke up. “Centuries ago, people with extreme photosensitivity would live in caves—those with extreme cases can be burned even by UV radiation from diffused sunlight. A family group sharing the condition might have sought the safety of an underground existence, especially in the Southwest, with intense sunlight and vast cavern systems.”
Dr. Smith, the man with so little imagination he had amazed CIA psychiatrists, cleared his throat thoughtfully. Remo knew he disliked stepping into the realm of the unknown, but he also hated to leave any mystery unclassified.
“It sounds plausible, Smitty. Go with it. Junior’s theory also accounts for their drained brains. If it was a family of pioneers that went belowground in the good old Wild West days and started interbreeding, you’ll end up with lots of stupid people today.”
“It would also account for the irregular state of their degeneration,” Howard added. “Some folks have more bad chromosomes than others—there hasn’t been enough time for the badness to become consistent throughout the population. That gives you Talkers and Grunters.”
Smith ahemed. “Mark, please research this. Maybe we can estimate the size of a family group likely to share this photosensitivity, and from there the size of the group that originally went belowground. We’ll then extrapolate an expected range of chromosomal degradation through incestual reproduction.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, Smitty,” Remo said. “But why do you care about all this stuff?”
“It may tell us the size of the albino population, even point us to historic records. We need to know what to expect if and when they attack again.”
“You are going to close the waste site, right?” Remo bristled. “It’s bad news.”
“Nobody is going to be happy about closing that waste site, including the federal government, but it will obviously need to be shut down. That will take time. We’ll order an evacuation at once.”
“Chiun and I should go back in there with lots of batteries so we can ferret out Caveman City.”
“They’re only a part of the real problem—and the real problem is Fastbinder of whoever is using his technology. Our next step is to identify the young man who was responsible for stealing the abandoned ordnance from White Sands,” Smith said. “This might not be possible if the boy is as young as he looks. He may not have any digital photographic record. We’d like you and Chiun to investigate the spot where the earth drill surfaced. We think there’s an undiscovered body at the scene.”
“Why undiscovered? Bodies usually make themselves known.”
“It was partially buried when the: earthy drill emerged—that’s when we spotted it—and after the earth drill made its escape there was no sign of it. The cadaver may have been obliterated.”
“And now what’s left has been ripening in the sun for a day. Sounds like pleasant work.” Remo had to agree that Fastbinder was more important than the albino army, however they figured in. “And Whiteslaw?”
“He’s now at the top of our priority list,” Smith declared. “He’ll be able to provide us with intelligence on all of this. Who’s behind it, how many of them, what they’re actually trying to accomplish.”
Remo laughed grimly. “What they want is the same thing as always. To corner the market on secret military technology.”
Remo felt a dark cloud hanging over him when he hung up. Chiun was watching him, the iBlogger now sitting dark on the table.
“What?”
“Remo, you will now listen to what the Master Emeritus says to you.”
“I always do. Okay, go ahead.”
“No.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I would go to White Sands alone. This is the work of Fastbinder, or those who possess Fastbinder’s machinations. Those machinations could be deadly to you”
“To both of us,” Remo insisted. “Remember Barkely, California? I lasted longer than you did when those nutcases hit us with those proton death rays.”
“My son, you are now in an unstable state. I fear the memory of your time beyond the Void—”
“Stop, Chiun. I don’t want to go there.”
“Remo, listen to yourself if not to your father in spirit. You fear even to summon the memory lest it bring on a relapse. What would happen if you were to experience the actual thing yet again?”
The veins were standing out on Remo’s freakishly thick wrists. He was pacing now, clenching his fists and grinding his teeth. Chiun’s eyes grew hollow as he watched his protégé fight the inevitable memory. He heard Remo’s pulse race, then plummet, then race again. The skin of the Reigning Master flooded with hot blood, then the circulation sank deep into the extremities and he became cold.
Remo did all this consciously, engaged in hard battle with his own mind, and Chiun didn’t dare distract him further. Or should he? Would it be better for Remo to face this memory now? Surely he would have to do so eventually.
For good or evil, Chiun couldn’t be the one to do it. He carried his own fresh scars of guilt for bringing that harm upon the one he loved best in all the world. If the Slate child had not been there to insinuate herself, Remo might never have returned to the world of consciousness.
Remo’s internal discord finally waned, and he came to sit on his own mat on the floor, facing Chiun.
“You’re right about one thing. I am afraid, Little Father.”
Chiun nodded.
“Being afraid means I can’t allow you to face this alone, because then you’d be at greater risk of facing what I’m afraid of.” Remo’s explanation puzzled himself. He tried again. “A mother jaguar who is traumatized of the water will still go with her cubs into the river, to protect them from drowning.”