Chapter 25
The intense silence made it seem as if the dusty old mansion had been smothered in a ghostly fist. Although the thrumming electrical hum was gone, their eardrums still rang with the memory as Remo and Chiun crossed the threshold.
Remo glanced up the stairs down which he'd come a few minutes before. "Big house," he commented. "He could be hiding anywhere."
Chiun shook his head firmly. "Where would you go?" the old man demanded.
Remo considered. "Probably the basement. The fuse box would be there. It'd be easier to connect there if he wanted to run the whole joint. But the way Gordons is, he could hook in at any point if he had to."
Chiun was already breezing past him. "He will be in the basement," he insisted.
"I was only saying that's where I'd go," Remo insisted as he trailed his teacher.
"And you are different from an uncreative, unthinking robot in what way?" Chiun asked blandly.
He whirled through the broken remnants of the basement door and ducked down the stairs.
"Don't go on the rag with me just 'cause I'm not moving to Maine," Remo grumbled, following. Emergency lights on battery backups lit their way. In the basement Remo didn't comment on the remnants of broken wall or the twisted mechanical crocodile that lay atop the pile of bricks.
They wound around the wooden stairs and headed past the idle furnace.
The cellar beneath the mansion was huge.
In one space off the main room, Remo saw what appeared to be Stewart McQueen's bedroom. There were bookcases, magazines, a TV and a small refrigerator.
A double-wide coffin lined with dirt and shaded by a frilly overhanging canopy was the room's centerpiece. Twin feather pillows rested against the granite gravestone headboard.
"Next time I think I should be reading more, remind me this is where my money goes," Remo said. Chiun didn't respond. His brow darkening, he held a slender finger to his papery lips. He cocked an ear forward.
Remo had heard the sound, too.
It was a soft metallic groan. The noise rose and fell, like a rusted bolt being unscrewed.
Rounding a corner, the two men found the fuse box. Connected to its face was a pair of fat furry legs. The body to which the legs were attached was not visible. They extended through the air and disappeared around a corner. The granite archway into which they vanished opened into a dirt-lined tunnel.
The legs had been spinning in order to unscrew from the fuse box. When Remo and Chiun rounded the corner, the appendages detached and flopped to the floor. Without seeming to be aware of the two Masters of Sinanju, they silently retracted, sliding back into the shadowed recesses of the loamy tunnel.
Remo and Chiun trailed them to the stone arch. The long black legs slithered around the corner and disappeared.
When Remo and Chiun stepped into the archway, the legs were already several yards away. They were being absorbed into the sides of a figure who stood at calm attention in the dark depths of the tunnel.
Over the years Mr. Gordons had assumed many different forms and faces. The face he wore now was the first one they had ever seen on him. He was tall with sandy blond hair and wore a perpetual smile that was not quite a smile. His blue eyes were unblinking.
When they appeared before him, the android didn't express a hint of surprise. As his long spider's legs rolled back into his human torso, he nodded to each man in turn.
"High probability Remo, high probability Chiun. I would offer you a drink, but as it is likely that you intend to cause me bodily harm I have calculated as negligible the odds that you would accept such an offer."
Remo's face was stone.
"You got it wrong, metalman," he said icily as he stepped into the tunnel.
A hint of something that, at least on a human face, might have passed for a frown touched Mr. Gordons's brow.
"That is improbable," the android said. "Unless you have deviated from your previous pattern, you will attack me."
"My son means that we do not intend to cause you mere bodily harm," Chiun explained, circling cautiously away from his pupil. Taking the cue, Remo moved the opposite way. "We intend to dismantle you piece by piece and bury your evil parts in the four corners of the Earth."
The tunnel was wide enough that Remo and Chiun could move to opposite walls as they advanced on Gordons.
With a final whirring snap, the android's spider arms stopped retracting. Each one of them five feet long, they remained jutting from beneath the armpits of his human arms.
"Your statement is incorrect," Gordons said. As they walked toward him, he made not a move. "The Earth is roughly spherical in shape-therefore it has no corners. What is more, it is not I but the two of you who will cease to function this day."
"Sez you," Remo challenged. "So how'd you get out of the volcano, tinman?"
"My family freed me," the android replied simply.
Remo had a mental image of a bunch of toasters and VCRs lowering a knotted bedsheet down into the Mexican volcano where they'd dumped Mr. Gordons.
They were now only a few yards from the android. Remo kept as far from Chiun as possible. Difficult to do in such a confining space. Gordons seemed to realize their problem.
"Your method of attack is flawed," Gordons pointed out. "By separating you think to divide my attentions. But this passage is not wide enough for your plan to succeed."
The words had not passed his lips before he attacked.
The two spider legs whizzed forward, re-forming as they came. By the time they reached Remo and Chiun, their furry tips had been transformed into metallic spearheads.
Remo dropped below the deadly spear. As it brushed over his shoulder, he grabbed onto the shaft with one hand, snapping down with the other. With the side of his palm he severed a two-foot-long section of rigid leg.
Ducking, Chiun mirrored his pupil's movements. When he shot back up he, too, had a spear in hand. Hissing sparks from their stumps, the injured legs curled back up to the android's chest.
Remo tried to gauge the heft of the weapon in his hand. It was awkward to do. The leg was apparently constructed of the same frictionless material Gordons had left at the scenes of his Florida crimes.
"Use caution, Remo," Chiun warned. Ever alert, he kept his voice low as he advanced with his makeshift weapon. "He is not as he was when last we met."
Remo, too, had noticed the speed. During their last encounter with Gordons, the android was a weakened version of his former self. But this seemed like the Gordons of old.
Although Chiun's words were soft enough that only Remo should have heard, it was Mr. Gordons who replied.
"The old one is correct," Mr. Gordons agreed. "With the introduction of supplementary data, my original program was altered over time. Due to the damage inflicted by the two of you I have decided to go back to my beginnings, reinstalling my original commands. What I once was, I am again."
"You were a tin-plated asswipe," Remo suggested, raising his spear.
Gordons flicked his metallic eyes to the younger Master of Sinanju. And in that sliver of a moment when his attention was diverted, Chiun let his missile fly.
The spear whistled through the dank air, sinking deep into the android's head. A spray of white sparks spit from his face, peppering the dirt floor around his feet.
Gordons reeled, spear jutting from between his eyes like a misshapen extra nose.
It was only when he staggered to one side that they saw the second set of spider legs. Curled tightly, they had been hidden behind the android's back. Imminent danger provoked action.
The spare legs shot out from his body. But rather than launch forward at Remo and Chiun, the spider legs plowed into the dirt walls of the tunnel, burrowing deep into earth.