"The great meeting. Herr Fuhrer is going to make an announcement of his future plans. I came here to tell everyone," she added, indicating with her head a public-address microphone sitting on the desk.
Remo hesitated.
"Everyone will be there," said Ilsa. "You can ask us all your questions then."
Remo turned to Chiun. "What do you think, Little Father?"
"If we get all the racists together in one place," Chiun said bitterly, "maybe the room will catch fire and there will be fewer racists in the world. Do not ask me, I am inconsolable over the loss of the metallurgist."
"Okay," Remo told Ilsa. "Make your announcement, but no tricks."
"No tricks," said Ilsa, picking up the heavy microphone and flicking the switch that would send her voice out through the broadcast speakers installed in every building in Fortress Purity. "I could not possibly trick superior beings like yourselves."
"This one at least is educable," Chiun sniffed.
Chapter 25
Konrad Blutsturz lay staring at the ceiling. He imagined himself back in Argentina, in the green room, in the 1950's. Only by reliving the horror of those days could he steel himself for what he was about to do, the great test of his will.
The doctors had told him he must have a week's rest. The new limbs were attached through surgical implants and were detachable, replaceable, but the incisions made for the implants that were fitted into the shattered bones of his stumps required time to heal. Unnecessary movement was restricted, even forbidden.
And so Konrad Blutsturz lay on his bed, as helpless as in the days when he was a one-limbed abortion, flopping and twisting in his nightmares.
Except now he was not limited by the lack of limbs, but by the weight of his new limbs. His shining blue titanium limbs.
It was dangerous, but again, Konrad Blutsturz had no choice.
And so he willed his left arm to move.
It lifted, heavily. Good. He pushed himself to a sitting position using both arms, the strong good one and the stronger blue one. The bed creaked in agony.
He whipped the sheet off his body. The legs twitched like an insect's mandibles. They gleamed like locust armor.
With an effort that sent pain searing along his nerves, Konrad Blutsturz stood up. It felt strange, giddy, to stand so tall after so long. For nearly forty years he had looked at the world from the eye level of a small child. Now he stood as tall as any man. Any erect man.
In the corner stood the motorized wheelchair which had meant freedom and mobility to him. But it belonged to the past. He would crush it, but he needed its use one final time.
Konrad Blutsturz walked to the wheelchair. His legs, powered by battery packs implanted in the limbs themselves, moved with the soundless animation of a marionette.
The first step was easy. The second easier. The motion was smooth. Mere will made each step happen, like real legs. Microcomputers controlled the striding gait. His unfeeling legs carried him with a rolling motion, as if he were on a ship.
With his strong titanium left arm, Konrad Blutsturz lifted the heavy wheelchair.
He walked out of the room, straghtening his torso to control the imbalance. But even the weight of the wheelchair did not deter him. He noticed his walk was becoming smoother as the titanium parts grew used to their task. He grinned.
Passing a hall mirror, he saw himself completely for the first time. But instead of pride. He felt anger. He saw a gleaming monster. He cursed the name of Harold Smith under his breath and strode on.
The Fortress Purity auditorium was deserted. The rows of collapsible chairs had been cleared for the operation, but now even the operating table was gone. There was just the platform stage and a dark stain where Ferris D'Orr had had the life squeezed out of his neck.
Konrad Blutsturz did not think of Ferris D'Orr. Ferris D'Orr belonged to the past. Konrad Blutsturz belonged to the future.
The wooden access ramp cracked under his massive weight as he mounted the stage and set the wheelchair facing where the audience would stand. He was nude, but not as nude as he had been. Something pink and rubbery dangled from the hairlessness of his crotch. But he did not think of that now either as he ripped the great red Nazi banner from the back wall. He thought only of the menace of the two rnen who had followed him to Fortress Purity.
Konrad Blutsturz wrapped himself up in the flag he no longer believed in and settled into the wheelchair. It squealed under his weight, the spoked wheels bending into useless ovals. He arranged the red flag until his entire body was shrouded like a mummy on an ancient throne.
He waited. Soon Ilsa's announcement would come. Soon the White Aryan League of America and Alabama would be assembled before him. And soon they would all fall like grass before a mower.
They filed into the auditorium slowly at first, then in a hurried rush. He regarded them with black eyes that were so glazed with pain they barely saw. But soon the pain would be a thing of the past. Soon he would have his two greatest desires, Ilsa's supple body and Harold Smith's limp corpse.
The assembled Aryan League stood before him, muttering under their breath. They had heard that their Fuhrer was to undergo a miraculous operation. But there he was, gray-faced and sickly, wrapped in a red blanket, in his wheelchair. What had happened?
Konrad Blutsturz' eyes came to life when Ilsa stepped into the standing-room-only crowd. With her were the two dangers to his life, the man called Remo and the other one, the Oriental. They saw him, and started through the crowd toward him. But the crowd was thick.
He saw Ilsa lock the great double doors behind them. Good. She understood. He had already locked the side door. Now there was no exit from the windowless room. No exit for any of them.
This is how it was to be with the Harold Smiths, thought Konrad Blutsturz. He would invite them all to this room with some ruse. A giveaway or sweepstakes lure. Every Harold Smith who could be the Harold Smith. And after the doors were locked . . .
The two men were halfway through the crowd already. They seemed to find the paths of least resistance in the mass which pressed closer to the stage in anticipation.
Konrad Blutsturz raised his voice.
"I have summoned you, men and women of the White Aryan League of America and Alabama, because a grave danger threatens our purity. Infiltrators, enemies of the White Arvan League."
The crowd tensed. They looked at one another fearfully. They remembered what had happened the last time their Fuhrer had said such words. One of them had died.
"These enemies are among us now," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They are in this room. One of them is white, the other is not."
"I think he means us, Remo," said Chiun, in the crowd.
All heads turned toward the squeaky sound of Chiun's voice.
"Now you did it, Little Father," said Remo.
"You see them," called Konrad Blutsturz. "Now deal with them!"
The crowd exploded. Remo and Chiun were inside a boiling tangle of humanity that was clawing, squeezing, groping for them.
Chiun whirled in place like a miniature dervish, and the people in his immediate vicinity flew away frorn him like gravel off a flywheel.
Remo took the opposite tactic. He grabbed the reaching hands and pulled them toward him. Bodies followed Remo's yanking motions, colliding into other bodies.
Konrad Blutsturz watched in amazement touched with admiration. Two men against hundreds. Two unarmed men against a disciplined mob. And not only did they remain untouched, but they continued to advance on the stage, effortlessly, inexorably.
It was at that moment, unnoticed by the furious mob, that Konrad Blutsturz rose from the crushed wheelchair to his full height.
Towering on the stage, he sucked in a triumphant breath. He could smell the sweat of humans in conflict, see their frenzy, almost taste their bodies. Even in this elemental state, they were but masses of organs and tissue and bone. He was all that and more. He was titanium and servo motors and over six feet tall. And as he willed it, his artificial knee joints whirred, and like a telescope stretching out, he rose from six feet to six and a half and then to a figure of flesh and blue metal that stood over eight feet tall.