"It had good taste when it talked to me," Chiun
said.
"I think Reva's friend is this computer. Not a real
person. This damned machine."
"Is it anaerobic?" Chiun asked.
Remo went to the wall switch and cut off the machine's power.
"I don't know,." he said. "But we're going to take some of its innards out and let Smitty figure it out."
He started pulling bits of machinery out of a panel in the front of the computer, and Chiun said, "Too bad."
"Why?"
"This is twice this machine has talked to me. I was getting to like it."
"That was the same voice that called you on the island to offer you work?" Remo said.
"Yes. Didn't I tell you that?"
"No. You said just now it had a throat problem. I think that happened when I cut the machine's power."
"I don't really understand computers," Chiun said. "I specialize in anaerobic."
232
Chapter Sixteen
Remo stood in the telephone booth at the corner of Forty-second Street and Ninth Avenue in New York, waiting for the phone to ring. A six-foot, eight-inch teenagei who was so thin he looked as if he had been extruded through a pipe, bopped down the street toward him. He was wearing sneakers. On his shoulder was a raáio whose case was big enough to hold a week's groceries.
He stopped next to the booth and shuffled around io the pockets of his jeans for a coin.
"Move out, bro," he said. "Gotta use the phone."
"I can't hear you," Remo said.
"Whass that?"
"I can't hear you. Your radio's too loud."
"Wha?"
Remo turned his back on the young man, who tapped him on the shoulder.
"Need that phone, Mister," he said.
"Turn down your radio."
"Say wha?" The radio was sizzling at top volume with a song that managed to combine a monotonous beat with an insipid lyric. The young man was tapping his feet and snapping his fingers.
"Move yo ass, pal. I needs that phone," the young man said.
"Don't you know disco's dead?" Remo said.
"Wha?"
"You annoy me."
233
"Huh?'
"Did you know that in a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two legs is equal to the square of the hypotenuse? This is usually expressed as A squared plus B squared equals C squared. It's called the Pythagorean theorem. Sister Margaret thought I'd never learn it, but I did. She also thought I'd never amount to anything, and here I am, about to do the whole world a favor." "Wha?"
"Good-bye," Remo said. He took the radio from the young man's shoulder.
"Hey. Be careful with that box," the man said. Remo held it between his two hands, one hand on each end, and then pulled his hands apart. The radio groaned and then snapped apart in the center. The sound died with a squawk.
"Hey, mother, look what you done to my box." "And now you," Remo said. He extended his hands toward the young man, who looked at him, at his pieces of radio, then at Remo again. Then he looked toward New Jersey across the river and started running toward it.
The telephone rang, and Remo asked Smith, "Did you get the stuff?"
"The silicon chips? Yes. They just arrived." "Okay. I took them out of the computer at Reva Bleem's place. I don't know anything about it, but I think the chips are supposed to have the computer's brains in them or something."
"That's about right. These are VLSI chips. That means ..."
"I don't care what it means," Remo said. "What I think is that that computer was doing everything. Making the breeder bacteria. Trying to get them the oil. Trying to'kill Chiun and me. I shut the computer down, so I don't think you'll have any more trouble with it."
"You're telling me that a person wasn't behind this whole thing? A computer was?" Smith said.
234
"That's what I think. It was the computer that was offering Chiun work and everything and trying to get us to kill each other. Can you make anything out of those thingamajigs?"
"The chips? Yes, I should be able to. If you're right, then we've got this all in hand. We've got all the rapid-breeder bacteria off St. Maarten's. Everything should be cleared up."
"Not quite," Remo said.
"What else?"
"There's still Reva Bleem and her artificial oil," Remo said before hanging up.
Smith looked at the four silicon chips lying in his hand like tarnished silver quarters. From the side of each projected two golden threadlike wires.