Smith found speed-reading useless for absorbing important documents, but for trolling the net it was more than adequate.
Certain key words jumped out at him whenever he did this. His eyes saw everything, but his alert brain only picked up on the key words. In a way Smith functioned like a human data processor when he did this.
It was while scanning a continuous scroll of random news reports that Smith's eyes alighted on a word that caused him to instinctively reach for the scroll-lock key.
The screen froze the amber blocks of text on the buried screen.
It had happened so fast Smith's brain hadn't quite registered the word that caused the reflex action to kick in.
He stared at the word now. It appeared on the screen as "Sunonjo."
Smith blinked his tired gray eyes.
"Sunonjo?" he muttered, tapping a hotkey. In response, a window text opened up in the center of the screen.
"Sunonjo: no exact match."
Knowing that reporters were notorious for factual and spelling errors, Smith tried several variations, including "Sinanjo" and "Sunanju," but each time no match appeared.
Giving up, Smith deactivated the encyclopedia program and turned his attention to the main text.
It was a brief news item datelined Yuma, Arizona. Smith read it carefully.
Arizona Virus (AP)
A new form of hantavirus may mean the end to an obscure group of Indians who have survived in the southwest corner of Arizona for centuries. The Sunonjo tribe have dwelt peacefully in the Sonoran Desert, coexisting with Navajo, Hopi and white man alike. Tribal legends say they have never known war. Now a virulent new hantavirus has emerged, which has begun to lay waste to the peace-loving tribe.
Smith laid his blinking amber cursor against the word hantavirus.
Instantly a window opened up.
Hantavirus: A genus of airborne viruses, believed to originate in rodent droppings. First recognized during the Korean War, and named for the Hantaan River, where it was encountered by US. Army doctors. Symptoms include coughing and chills, which rapidly progress to a pneumonialike filling of the lungs, and coma. Death often comes within forty hours, if untreated.
"Odd," said Smith.
He finished reading the news extract, found it unimportant except for the coincidence of the name Sunonjo and moved on.
An hour or so later, eyes fatiguing, Smith logged off the net, frowning.
It had been an frivolous expenditure of time, he decided.
Somewhere the truth of Remo Williams's ancestry lurked unsuspected. But wherever it was, it was not to be found on the net. Of that Dr. Harold W. Smith was absolutely positive.
WHEN REMO WOKE up, his limbs were stiff.
The polar bear atop him had grown cold and seemed to have picked up an extra ton of dead weight.
Remo crawled out and got to work immediately.
He started at the neck, where the warm white fur lay smooth and flat against the bear's skin, and dug his cold-stiffened blue fingers deep into the thick skin.
With one fingernail that was always kept clipped an eighth-inch longer than the others, Remo began scoring the blubbery skin. His nails-like those of all Sinanju Masters-had achieved a combination of strength and sharpness that ordinary people who abused their bodies by consuming beef fat and dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, could never imagine. Many years of prescribed diet and exercise had given Remo's fingernails the cutting power of a straight razor.
Still, even a straight razor had its limitations. As he felt the body heat being sucked out of his lean body by the relentlessly contractive Arctic cold, Remo kept at it until the skin at the back of the polar bear's neck parted like a ghastly pink grin, exposing meat and vertebrae.
Then, selecting a spot over the spine, he climbed atop the behemoth and, working on his knees, began ripping the life-preserving pelt back to the tail. The exuding polar-bear warmth kept his muscles from going too stiff.
When he was done, Remo peeled both sides down to the ice and tried to figure a way to roll the skeletal mass of exposed raw meat and bones off its skin. His muscles felt like iron lumps.
The cold continued to suck energy and warmth from his body at a ferocious rate. An internal awareness of his body's state told Remo he was low on calories and to try to move the monster would leave him weak and exhausted on the remorseless ice with a life expectancy of maybe twenty minutes.
So Remo crawled into the body, squeezing between the thick, yellowish fat and the raw meat and ribs, knowing that the blubber would insulate him from the cold.
To conserve energy, he went back to sleep. This time he did not dream.
Chapter 10
The captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Margaret Trudeau was skeptical to say the least.
But he saw that the ancient Asian was frantic. It could not be acting. His state was agitated in the extreme.
As the cutter cut through the Arctic sea, the old man paced the afterdeck frantically while searchlights blazed across the cold, unforgiving waters of Cumberland Sound.
It was broad daylight now, but there was a chance the searchlights would be seen by the person they were searching for and he would find a way to signal them.
"Would you mind explaining it all one more time?" Captain Service asked.
"Yes, I would mind," the old man snapped.
"It would help us find your friend."
"He is not my friend. He is a fool whom I cannot leave alone for a single moment."
"You landed in Pangnirtung, a perfectly inhospitable place, where you and your traveling companion rented a vehicle. That much I have clear in my mind. And you went for a ride without benefit of guide or map. Why?"
"Remo is very impetuous."
"No. No. What were you doing in this region? What was your purpose?"
"Vacation."
"You and he were vacationing above the Arctic Circle?"
"It is sununer, is it not?"
"Yes. But it hardly constitutes the summer of the lower latitudes."
The old man flapped his scarlet sleeves like a flustered bird trying to take off. "We were driving and ran out of fuel. I went in search of a gas station and when I came back, the vehicle was gone and so was Remo." "Your friend sent you across pack ice for gas?"
"I know it is idiotic. But I could not trust him not to become lost."
"I understand you parked at the edge of the sea. A very dangerous place."
"How was I to know the idiot would park upon a shelf of ice that would fall into the sea?"
"Actually it didn't fall. It simply broke off and drifted away. It happens all the time during these summer months."
The old Asian made a snappish gesture with one flapping sleeve. "With Remo and the vehicle upon it. No doubt he was asleep and entirely oblivious to all!"
"Please calm down. He could not have drifted very far in so short a time. I am confident we will find him."
"In this merciless cold? It will sap him of all vitality-"
Captain Service said nothing to that. There was no gainsaying it. If the foolish American who had parked at the edge of Cumberland Sound only to drift off on an ice pack was not soon found, he would certainly perish by the time he reached Davis Strait.
"We will find him," Service promised.
But as he returned to the bridge, he saw by his watch that the chances had become very slim indeed. This cold tended to suck the life from a man like some ferocious, icy Dracula.
LITTLE MORE THAN an hour later the first mate called out. "Captain, I spy something unusual."
Captain Service went directly to the bow and raised his binoculars.