"The fly," Remo said. "It's got to be the key."
"Find another key," Chiun said, plunking the cube into a wastebasket.
"What do you mean? What'd you do that for?"
"Because this fly is dead," Chiun said and walked from the room.
Chapter 19
They were in the basement room in Folcroft Sanitarium, where a small laboratory had been set up by Smith for Barry Schweid. Through the walls, Remo could hear the faint hum of the cooling system in the rooms that housed Folcroft's giant computers.
Chiun made it a point to keep his back to Remo and Remo just sighed and folded his arms and pretended to look interested in what Barry Schweid was doing.
The little fat man was in his glory. He pranced around the black lab table and whooped. He gestured ecstatically toward the dissected speck beneath his powerful microscope.
"It's fantastic, I tell you. Fantastic," Barry squealed in his perennially adolescent soprano. "You say somebody just gave you this."
"Just like Santa Claus," Remo said.
"Amazing," Barry said. "That someone would give a perfect stranger a gift of this magnitude."
Chiun snorted. "Not perfect," he said. "This pale piece of pig's ear is many things, but perfect anything is not one of them."
"Actually," Remo said, "I think they were trying to kill us."
"This fly couldn't kill directly. It's been bred to function as a catalyst," Schweid said.
"Oh. Well, that explains everything," Remo said. "Of course."
"Why is this idiot talking about caterpillars?" Chiun mumbled under his breath in Korean. "Flies, caterpillars, I am tired of bugs."
"No," Schweid said to Remo. "The fly has no strength of its own. But . . . well, it was all in Dexter Morley's notes. Unlike ordinary houseflies, this one can bite. And its bite does something to the host body."
"The bitee?" Remo said.
"Right. It puts him into a plane with cosmic curves to which the body is not usually attuned," Schweid said.
"Say what?" Remo said.
"It's simple really. Take an ant."
"Now ants," Chiun grumbled in English.
"Can't we just talk about flies?" Remo asked Barry.
"The ant is a better example. An ant can carry hundreds of times its own weight. How do you think it can do that?"
"Chiun does it all the time," Remo said. "He has me carry everything."
"Silence, imbecile," Chiun barked. "Breathing," he said to Barry matter-of-factly. "It is the basic principle of Sinanju. The breath is at the core of being."
"Chiun, we're talking about ants," Remo said. "Not philosophy."
"But he's right," Schweid said.
"Of course," Chiun said.
"Their bodily systems are capable of refracting cosmic curves of energy in such a way that their strength is completely disproportionate to their body mass. Actually, any species could achieve this strength, if it could muster the concentration for it," Schweid said. "It's just that ants don't have to concentrate. It happens naturally for them."
"You say any species could do this?" Remo said. "Could you?"
"I think so, if I could concentrate." His apple cheeks beamed. "But it'll need Blankey." He picked up the ragged blue blanket and tossed it around his shoulders like a warrior's cloak, then looked into space.
"I'm going to try to concentrate on the cosmic curves in this room," Barry said, "and make myself one with them." He took a deep breath, then another, and another. His eyes glazed. He stood stock-still for several minutes, gazing into nothingness, breathing like a locomotive.
Remo yawned and drummed his fingers on his forearm.
"Is this almost a wrap?" he asked.
"Silence," Chiun hissed.
"Oh, you can't be serious," Remo began, but Chiun silenced him with a glance that would crack granite. After a few moments more, Barry raised his head, a look of exultation in his eyes. Tentatively he reached out with one hand to grasp the leg of the laboratory table.
"Come on," Remo.said. "That's got to weigh three hundred pounds."
Barry looked toward a wall, and the table lifted an inch off the ground.
Remo gaped as Barry lifted the table another inch, then another. The face of the fat little man in the baby blanket showed no strain or effort, only innocent rapture. He raised the table to eye level, his arm fully outstretched, then slowly lowered it. Not one item on the table had moved, not so much as a red wing from the dissected fly. Barry set the table down without a sound.
"Excellent," Chiun said.
"I can't believe it," Remo said.
"I can," Chiun said. He turned to Barry. "I have been looking for a pupil. Would you be willing to wear a kimono?" Before Barry could answer, Chiun said, "You would make a fine pupil. We could begin today with the tigers' paws exercises."
"Will you cut it?" Remo groused. "Whatever this guy discovered, it's not Sinanju."
"Jealousy for the accomplishment of others does not become one who refuses to make the effort to accomplish himself," Chiun intoned.
"Who's jealous? I'm not jealous. It was a fluke. And I'm not wearing any kimono." He turned to Barry. "What has this got to do with the fly?"
"The fly imparts that strength without the concentration," Barry said, rubbing his cheek on the blanket.
"So those two people in the house . . ."
"Exactly," Schweid said. "You said they were like animals. They were. They were stung by one of these flies."