"I've heard of them before," Remo said dryly.
"Really?" Smith asked, genuinely surprised. "I found the notion ludicrous. In any event, the L.A. police have been sent to collect Ford's friend. I doubt that his input will illuminate much, but we have little else to go on."
"What about Chesterfield?" Remo asked. "If you can't give me Roote, at least let me punch that bloated crapbag's ticket."
Smith shook his head. "General Chesterfield has fled east. He arrived at Washington National Airport earlier this morning. Beyond that, I have yet to attempt to locate him."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because Chesterfield is a side issue. He can be dealt with in time. We must not allow ourselves to lose focus of the main objective here."
Remo dropped into a swivel chair near Smith. "Roote," he said bitterly.
"That is correct." Smith tapped a frustrated hand on the table next to his laptop. "General Chesterfield has created in Elizu Roote a potentially unstoppable killing machine. If he reserves his energy, he can go for weeks at a time without recharging. His bionic and biological systems are flawlessly integrated. The science that combined to create him is as brilliant as it is terrifying."
"Tell me something I don't know, Smitty." Smith's face grew grim. "Roote's psychological make-up," he suggested.
"What about it?"
"He likes to kill." Before Remo could interrupt, Smith raised a hand. "It goes beyond the obvious, Remo," he said. "Roote fits the psychological profile of a serial killer to a tee. The psychosis he is displaying now has not manifested itself as a result of his physical alterations. He was most likely insane long before the general got his hands on him."
"So Chesterfield and his pals took a stir-fried, finger-painting loony and turned him into a freaking walking power plant," Remo said flatly.
"It is arguable who was the greater lunatic, but essentially, yes. That is the case."
"Who here's ready to reinstitute the draft?" Remo said, shaking his head in disgust.
Smith's sleep-deprived eyes were glazed. "A being with a combination of Roote's dangerous psychological temperament and man-made abilities was a disaster waiting to happen at the outset."
"And now he's in the hands of some dip shit Buzz Aldrin wannabe," Remo muttered.
"Yes," Smith said, his voice trailing off. He stared beyond Remo for a few long seconds. At last, he turned back to his computer.
As Smith began typing, Remo was rising to his feet. He resumed his endless cycle around the huge tank.
On the floor, the Master of Sinanju continued to snore, unconcerned.
Chapter 19
Earth was doomed. Everyone who didn't already know it would find out soon enough.
It was an ecological thing. It was a political thing. It was a whole damn human race thing. The entire world was going to hell.
People in the know realized that imminent global disaster had as much to do with the destruction of the rain forest and the polluting of the oceans as it did with the planet's leaders. And ultimately the leaders in the United States were the ones that mattered most of all. A sad fact, but true.
For some reason unknown to Beta RAM, the world looked to America for leadership. Even those who claimed they didn't care about the opinions of the U.S. were obviously intensely jealous of the richest nation in the world. The United States set the terms for the global game. And when it fumbled the ball, the world suffered. But Beta RAM knew that this was only part of the story.
The U.S. government was in bed with special interest groups. And no matter who was in charge in Washington, the special interests dictated the rules on a host of different topics. The results were predictable: pollution, germ warfare, nuclear proliferation, the destruction of old-growth forests.
Further, Beta knew that behind the so-called special-interest groups was a cabal of seeming humans who controlled everything, for one evil purpose: to destroy the world. Beta RAM knew that the members of the Association of Evil were men only in appearance. In truth, they were Squiltasalien beings from the swamps of the second moon of the third planet circling Ursa Minor. Fearful of the fact that man was on the threshold of intergalactic travel, they had taken on the appearance of men in order to bring about the destruction of mankind.
Beta had tried to warn four consecutive puppet leaders of America of this grave danger to humanity. He found to his great horror that the influence of the Association was strong. He had been mocked, harassed and-after bringing a concealed weapon to a George Bush rally back in 1992-even imprisoned.
The only figure in recent years to express an interest in his story had been Ross Perot, but Beta RAM had hesitated to ally himself with the Texas billionaire. After all, he didn't want to appear crazy.
Beta RAM-who had been born Bobby Jack Balbo-would have almost given up all hope, condemning the world to the whims of the Squiltas, if not for one thing. Salvion.
Salvion was of the planet Tragg, whose inhabitants were the natural enemies of the Squiltas. In his native Traggian tongue Salvion meant "faith."
Salvion was a being of light who had come to Beta RAM many times over the course of his life. Appearing in glowing robes, he spoke of a future for a select few humans, separate from that ordained by the Squiltas. On several occasions, Salvion had even brought Beta aboard his celestial ark, taking him for rides around the cosmos.
The trips they took together were always breathtakingly beautiful and, oddly, seemed to coincide with Beta's most intense peyote and phenobarbital sessions.
As a result of his meetings with Salvion, Beta had withdrawn from society into the wilds of New Mexico. There, at Camp Earth he gathered around him a group of followers who awaited the inevitable end of time, when the Squiltas would succeed in their designs to destroy the planet. Only then would Salvion land with his celestial ark to shepherd the men and women of Beta RAM's camp to the safety of a distant star system. Where they would establish the paradise of New Earth.
Until that time, all Beta RAM could do was wait. And, as the mood struck him, drink.
The mood had hit him pretty hard lately.
As the desert sun rose higher into the clear blue sky this day, the brilliant stabs of sunlight burst through the corrugated tin sides of Beta's tumbledown hut. The light from the yellow star Sol, around which he had travelled more than once, spilled across his sleeping eyes.
Reluctantly Beta opened one bleary eye on the new day. He saw a foot.
Beta blinked the eye, as if trying to clear a fuzzy sleep image from his waking thoughts.
It was no good. The foot was still there. And it was dirty. Dark crescent moons of mud had collected beneath the too-long toenails.
Still with only one eye open, Beta dragged his gaze all the way up the rest of the filthy, naked body. He had to scuff his cheek against his tattered surplus Army blanket in order to get as far as the face.
When he saw who she was, he shivered in spite of the steamy heat inside the tin hut.
His companion was one of the Indian girls who had glommed onto the hope offered at Camp Earth. Her face was as flat as a crepe and as big around as a basketball. Above her three chins, rotten teeth were exposed with each sucking, snoring breath.
As he rolled over onto his itchy back, Beta opened his other eye. He stared at the white streaks of light slicing through the holes in the roof of the hut roof. He sighed.
"I gotta tell Salvion. When we load up the ark for New Earth-no pigs."
Clearing the morning phlegm from his throat, Beta RAM scanned the dirt floor for his pants.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Beta RAM was dressed and touring the temporary shelters that comprised Camp Earth, which was erected on a flat plateau in the Caballo Mountains west of the White Sands Missile Range.
The squalid camp was the sort of pathetic shantytown that normally sprang up across the border in Mexico, eighty miles south.
Old car hoods, sections of discarded tin, even the hull of a broken boat were leaned together into makeshift hovels. Ratty tarpaulins and sheets decorated with cartoon characters whose popularity had faded a decade before formed the outer skin of teepees. The skeletal framework beneath consisted of broom handles and steel rods lashed together with scrap wire.
Like Beta RAM, the men and women of Camp Earth had begun crawling out from beneath their piles of rubble to greet the new day. Before the pathetic homes, a few of the disciples of Salvion had already started breakfast.