"Animals flee as one and eat as one," the old Korean droned.
"And mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy," Remo said. "So what? Hey, where are you going?"
The Master of Sinanju had turned away. Shaking his head in annoyance, he padded up the stairs. "What did I not get?" Remo demanded of Sergeant Simon.
Jimmy Simon was staring down through the open cell-block door. Jungle roars echoed from out the darkness.
"Huh?" the police officer asked.
"Forget it," Remo sighed. "I need a phone." Feet heavy, he climbed the stairs after the Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 9
Mankind was destined for extinction.
No matter what bad human poets said, the end for mankind would not come with either fire or ice. There would be no deep comet impacts or continent-sized holocausts. No massive gravitational or tectonic shifts to alter the geography of the planet over which he lorded his supremacy. Man's Earth would not be swallowed by a massive solar flare or turned inside out by cosmic collision with a spiraling black hole.
The ecologists who perpetuated the pollution myth would be proved wrong.
The climatologists would be mistaken about the bogeyman of global warming.
Even the entomologists and botanists who were predicting lower and lower crop yields with resultant mass starvation due to a dwindling population of pollinating insects would be proved wrong.
In the end, the thing that would doom mankind was something so small it couldn't be perceived by the naked eye. Mankind would be undone by his own vaunted technology.
The ultimate irony for a species that more and more valued science over nature.
The species that was Man would die out because the first female of the species that would supersede mankind as lord of the Earth wished it to be so.
While thinking thoughts of the end of human history, Dr. Judith White used her sharp white teeth to tug the stopper from the mouth of the test tube.
The open end exposed a textured black rubber ball. With long fingernails, she delicately withdrew the eyedropper, careful not to lose a single drop of the brownish liquid that hung from its glass tip. With her middle finger, she tapped the hanging droplets back into the tube.
A charcoal filter rested in a shallow pan of water on the desk before her. With great care, she brought the dropper over the pan and gently squeezed the plunger.
Ten fat droplets of the brown solution plopped into the clear liquid in the pan. The pure Lubec Spring water darkened a deep brown.
Judith quickly replaced the dropper in the test tube, clamping the stopper back in place. Slipping the tube in her jacket pocket, she lifted the pan by the edges. With gentle movements, she swished the dark water around.
When she was satisfied that the compound had dissipated, she placed the pan back on the desk. She stood.
"Let it sit for an hour, then reinstall it," she ordered.
Standing before the desk, Owen Grude nodded understanding. "I think I can handle this now," he offered. "I've seen you do it dozens of times."
Owen was fidgeting. Agitated. As if at any moment he might try to spring in two directions at once. Judith White had seen this sort of behavior in her young before. The cubs always had so much energy. She shook her head firmly. "This is too critical. The filters have to be treated hourly. You're still a cub. At this stage stomach will always come before duty."
As if on cue, the quiet growl of Owen's rumbling stomach filled the room.
"Sorry," he apologized.
He was still trying to control his animal urges. But it was now against his nature.
Of course, Judith did not allow her base instincts to consume her. She had mastered both body and mind-harnessed them into a single, perfect being.
She could summon human intellect when it served her. She had the ability to squelch animal desire. And when it suited her, she could act on instinct better than any creature on the face of the planet.
She alone of all the beasts to ever walk and crawl and swim and run across the Earth had attained utter perfection.
Before her, Owen Grude shifted uncomfortably. He was trying so hard to be strong. But the urges at this stage were nearly overwhelming. Owen had a long way to go before he attained the perfection of Dr. Judith White. But perfection was on the way. Not that Owen or any of the other new mongrels would be around long enough to witness it.
"You have a little time before this is ready. Go feed," Judith commanded.
Owen didn't need to be told a second time. Spinning on his heel, he prowled out of the office. Once she was alone, Judith crossed over to a small, two-drawer filing cabinet. Beside it was a pair of pebbled black cases. She lifted one of the cases, setting it on a computer table below a long picture window. The softly sighing conifers of the deep Maine woods were framed in the window. The beauty of the scenery had no meaning to Judith White.
Fingering the silver tabs on the case, she popped open the lid.
Inside was lined with the gray peaks and valleys of special packing foam. Large glass vials were lined up neatly on the egg-carton foam. There were now as many empty as full. Slipping the test tube carefully from her pocket, she set it delicately in its own recessed compartment.
There was a reason why she would not allow Owen or anyone else to handle the formula. There was simply no way she would ever entrust something so important with one of the others. The compound had to be measured just so.
Too little would take too long to affect the humans, if it worked at all. Too much would be a waste. The process would be accelerated to two seconds from fifteen.
And at the moment she didn't want to waste a drop. She could have more made, but it would disrupt her plan, which at the moment was proceeding precisely on schedule.
The intellectual part of her that remained knew that the odds were increasing in her favor with every passing hour.
"It's nothing personal, mankind," she growled to the whispering woods. "Just survival of the fittest." Purring, Judith White slapped shut the case lid.
Chapter 10
Dr. Harold W. Smith felt good.
For most people, feeling good was a normal sensation. Oh, sometimes it was fleeting, sometimes it lingered, but for the world at large it wasn't terribly unusual to simply feel good. But for the director of the secret agency CURE, feeling good was a strange, alien sensation.
A dour, lemony man, Smith's moods generally ran the gamut from mildly concerned to deeply anxious. Sometimes he was peevish; very rarely he was angry. At times-when his country or agency was threatened-there were moments of full-blown panic or, more likely, steadfast resolve.
Feeling good was definitely not part of his normal emotional repertoire. So on this day, as he steered his car onto the street on which he had lived for the past forty years, he resolved to savor the sensation.
Smith parked his rusted old station wagon in the driveway of his Rye, New York, home. He grabbed his battered leather briefcase from the seat beside him. After locking the briefcase in the back compartment alongside the spare tire, he headed up the front walk.
His wife had heard the sound of the car pulling in the driveway. She was at the front door to meet him. "Hello, Harold," Maude Smith said. She was wiping her hands dry on a well-worn dishrag. Mrs. Smith had been in the process of scrubbing the old copper pots that had been a wedding gift from her longdeceased mother.
"Hello, dear," Smith said, giving the plump woman a peck on the cheek. He headed upstairs. Smith generally stayed at work from before sunup until well after sundown. Seeing Harold home at any other time of day would ordinarily be cause of great concern to Mrs. Smith. But although it was only eleven o'clock in the morning, his wife had not been surprised to see her Harold today.
Smith had told her he would be home at this time. And since he said it, she was confident he would come. Maude's Harold was nothing if not reliable.