"Stuff it!" snapped Remo.
"How much gold?" wondered Chiun.
"Forget it, Little Father. We do this by the numbers."
"What are the numbers?" asked Friend. "I understand numbers. Let us crunch numbers together so that we can be friends."
"The numbers are there's one phone line out of here and Smith has a lock on it. You can't escape."
"And you can destroy my host mainframe. I understand now. You wish to trade my security in return for which I must unfreeze the assets of the entire United States banking system."
"Something like that."
"After which you will destroy my mainframe anyway."
"Yes," said Chiun.
"Nice move, Chiun," said Remo. "You probably just blew the game plan."
"This is an intelligent machine," Chiun retorted. "It understands that is it doomed."
The mainframe hummed gently for perhaps a dozen seconds. Then the smooth voice of Friend said, "This is a no-win scenario. I do not accept it. Since I will be destroyed at the end game no matter what I do, there is no downside to not taking you with me."
And with a grinding of vast machinery and cracking of floor beams, the entire thirteenth floor caved in at
the center and dropped under their feet in two equal halves.
Caught flat-footed, Remo and Chiun began falling. Down into a vast electronic well as wide as the XL SysCorp building that pulsed with rows of multicolored lights that seemed to go down into the bedrock of Manhattan and farther to the center of the earth.
Remo's first thought as the blackness at the bottom rushed up to meet him was I've been here before.
Chapter 33
Harold Smith heard the crashing sound and jerked out of his seat. The ground shook under the van, setting it to wobbling on its springs.
"My God! What was that?" he croaked, throwing open the van's rear doors.
And he saw it. The moonlight washing the sides of the XL SysCorp building shook like disturbed milk. Glass panels began popping off the sides to dash themselves to pieces on the pavement below.
It was all over in a minute. When the ground stopped reverberating, Harold Smith knew that Remo and Chiun had failed.
The rows of pulsing lights zipped by them like passing meteors. They formed a giant colorful smile button on one wall. It followed them down, grinning goofily at them.
Remo assumed the shape of an X, positioning his body against the violent updraft. Skirts and wide sleeves flapping, the Master of Sinanju was doing the same, he saw.
Ail around them, damaged mainframes were tumbling and rebounding off the steel walls, breaking up and showering the air with broken bits of stinging metal and plastic.
"Think like a feather, my son," Chiun admonished.
Remo closed his eyes. He willed his bones to become hollow, his stomach to fill with air and mind to purge itself of all fear.
He weighed one hundred fifty-five pounds normally, a weight he'd maintained ever since he had come to Sinanju. He willed his body to lose most of its mass, just as his out-flung arms and legs stabilized his free- fall.
When it felt right, he opened his eyes. And there was Chiun, hazel eyes calm, not angry. They were falling in unison, in the dead spider posture of sky divers. Around them the mainframes seemed to pick up speed. They began falling faster. But that was an illusion. They were still dropping at terminal velocity.
It was Remo and Chiun who were slowing down.
Their eyes met and locked. And in that instant they had a mutual recognition of their assured survival.
Then a strange cloud passed over Remo's face.
"What is it?" Chiun demanded.
"I've been here before."
"What?"
"I remember this happening before."
"When?"
Remo's voice was faraway. "You were with me."
"This has never happened to me before."
"It was years ago. In a dream. I had a dream about this exact thing." "How did it end, this dream?"
"The floor opened up and we fell. But we both caught a light fixture. It wasn't strong enough to take both our weight. So you let go. You fell to your death. You gave your life for me."
"Then it is your turn to sacrifice yourself," spat Chiun disdainfully. "For I have no intention of dying this night."
Remo shook his head as if to clear it. "You know, in the dream Friend was behind it all, too."
"That part at least is true."
Then there was no more time for talk. The tumbling mainframes began striking the hard concrete below, and they steeled themselves to land amid the violent wreckage.
With the ground close, they snapped their bodies into tight balls, uncoiling at the last possible moment to land on their feet light as two feathers.
Remo landed on a broken computer, Chiun between the wreckage of two others.
They paused briefly, as if dizzy. Then, their body mass returning to normal, they took stock.
Far above, the electronic well that was in the interior of the XL SysCorp building continued to pulse and throb. They could see the underside of the fourteenth floor. The giant smiley face of lights loomed over them.
"I guess Friend couldn't stand to lose," Remo said.
"He has met the fate deserved by all who challenge Sinanju," Chiun intoned.
"That's not what worries me. He may have taken the U.S. banking system with him." "Pah! American paper money is worthless to begin with. Now Americans will understand the eternal beauty and truth that is called—gold!"
Remo whirled. The Master of Sinanju was pointing a quivering finger toward the south wall.
"Behold, Remo. Gold!"
Leaping and hopping over broken mainframes, they came to the gaping vault doors. Inside, gold was stacked in gleaming perfect pyramids. There was barely room to walk between them, the stacks were packed so tightly.
"Gold!" Chiun exulted. "All the gold one could ever want!"
"I'd trade it all for another crack at that greedy little chip," said Remo, unimpressed.
"Quickly, we must transport it to a safe place."
"We'd better contact Smith."
Smith stood gaping at the checkerboard pattern of the XL SysCorp building, not knowing what to think.
Then the van phone shrilled.
He grabbed the receiver and said, "Yes?"
"Smith. Remo."
"Remo, what happened?"
"Friend committed suicide."
"What!"
"We nailed every mainframe but one. Then he tried to bribe us and get us to give up your plan."
"You do not know my plan."
"Exactly. When he realized he wasn't getting anywhere, he opened up the floor and we all fell down, in clouding Humpty Dumpty. All the president's men couldn't put that last mainframe back together again. Sorry, Smith. We tried."
"Friend is no more?"
"We almost bought the farm ourselves. But we did find the gold in the basement vaults. Chiun is guarding it now. I'm calling from a pay phone."
"Computers do not commit suicide."
"This one did."
"Computers are machines," Smith insisted. "They are programmed. Friend was programmed by his creator to make a profit. And as far as I know, there was no self-destruct function in his programming."
"Could he have escaped by phone?"
"No. I have control of the only working XL phone line. He could not enter my computer because its chips are not compatible with his."
"Then he's dead."
' 'He is not dead. He was never alive. Stand by."
Smith terminated the connection and punched up the Con Ed supervisor who had been on hold for over four hours now.
"Cut power to grid 476," he snapped.
"You want me to black out a whole city block in Harlem?"
"Now," said Smith.
''You got it. Let's hope nobody riots."