"Right. I am always right."
Remo sighed. "Listen, I thought we settled this argument. "
"We did," Chiun retorted. " I dispatched the true Gordons."
"Yeah?" Remo countered. "Then what is he doing running around Mexico City tricked up to look like the Vice-President?"
"I do not know," Chiun sniffed. "But we can ask him later."
Remo sat up. "We can?"
"I have arranged a meeting with Gordons-the true Gordons-at the place called Teotihuacan. It is there we will negotiate for the safety of the President. And it is there that Gordons will tell you the truth of our last encounter with him."
" I can hardly wait," Remo said sourly. "So what does Gordons want?"
"What Gordons always wants. What he is programmed to want. To survive."
"Right. Survival. The prime directive." Remo's face darkened. "You know, I'm really, really sick of him coming back to haunt us."
The food arrived at that moment. Guadalupe Mazatl, who had been an interested but puzzled listener to the conversation, let the hotel waiter in. She shooed him away with a quick burst of Spanish and a fat tip.
Remo and Chiun got up and attacked the rice. Spurning the wheeled serving cart, they set the silver tray on the rug and assumed lotus positions before it as they dug in.
They ate in silence, and quietly Guadalupe joined them on the floor.
" I have been listening to your conversation," she said tentatively.
"Must be a local custom," Remo grumbled.
They ate with what Guadalupe thought was peculiar intensity, like men about to go into battle.
"I have listened to you discuss this hombre Gordon," she persisted. "Sometimes you talk of him as if he were a man. Other times as a machine. Which is it?"
"Both," Remo said.
"Neither," Chiun said.
"I would like to know more about this creature."
"It's our President," Remo said. "And our problem."
"And I will remind you that this is my country," Guadalupe replied tartly. " I am a law-enforcement officer. It is my duty to deal with internal threats."
"Tough," Remo said through a mouthful of rice.
"Tell her, Remo," Chiun said suddenly. "Why-"
"Because I am eating and I would rather suffer through your words than her nagging."
"What is 'nagging'?" Lupe demanded.
"What you were just doing," Chiun replied. "Remo."
Remo put down his rice. "All right," he began. "Years ago there was this crazy female NASA scientist. She liked to drink and she liked to make robots almost as much. Her dream was to create a thinking robot to send on long-distance space flights. Instead of sending people, NASA would send robots. Or androids. I guess Gordons is an android."
"I know this word 'robot,' but not 'android,' " Lupe admitted.
"It's like a robot, except it looks and acts almost human," Remo explained. "Linda like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, this woman scientist invented Mr. Gordons. This was after Mr. Seagrams and Mr. Smirnoff didn't work out."
"Those are liquor brands," Guadalupe said doubtfully.
"Didn't I mention she liked to drink? Well, that's what too much Gordon's gin will do for you. Gordons walks and talks like a man. He thinks like a six-year-old. But he knows how to do one thing well--survive. That's what he's programmed to do, and that's what he does."
"Survive . . . ?" Lupe repeated. Remo nodded. "Survive. That's where the real trouble with Gordons all began. When NASA funding was curtailed back in the seventies, the Gordons project was defunded. Gordons figured he'd be turned off, so he escaped. He's been on the loose ever since. "
"He is a menace?"
"Menace and a half," Remo said ruefully. "For a guy who's only interest is getting through the day, he's caused a junkyard's worth of trouble. We chased him to hell and gone in the U. S., all the way to Moscow, where the Russians shot him into space. We thought that was finally the end of him. He came back as a Russian space shuttle, later turning up, variously, as a car-wash machine and an amusement park. "
"You are making no sense," Lupe said.
Remo snapped his fingers. "Right. I forgot a step. Gordons is an assimilator. He assimilates things in order to survive. That means he becomes them. Any object, inanimate or living, that he can get his plastic hooks into-bingo, it becomes Gordons. That's how he was able to look like the Vice-President. That's how he survived falling sixteen stories. He's selfrepairing. He just picked himself up and lit off. He must have become the statue of Tito as camouflage.'
"This is an incredible story-too incredible to be believed. "
"We've got Gordons as the Vice-President on that videotape over there," Remo said, jerking a thumb back to a nightstand. "And you were the one who talked to Tito, not me."
Lupe closed her eyes. " I still shake when I hear that statue speak in my mind," she said hollowly.
"Wish I'd been there," Remo said fiercely, picking at his rice. " I would have ripped his head off."
"And the secret of the true President's fate would have perished with him," Chiun pointed out. "Unless his brain is in his little toe this time, in which case your attack would have been for nothing."
"Touche," Remo said. And seeing Guadalupe's puzzled brows knit together, added, "It's French."
"Meaning what?"
"Search me," Remo said.
"You want me to search you? What will I find?" Remo closed his eyes. "Never mind. Look, we've only got another couple of hours before we go to . . . What is it called again?"
"Teotihuacan. It is a ruin."
"Unlike Mexico City, which is only a disaster," Remo muttered. "Right. So we've got to get orders from home."
"From Smith?"