Dream Thing

“Chiun, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just wondering if we would see a dinosaur in a tweed jacket in the lake. You could say I was being less than serious.”

“I never know,” Chiun said in a whisper, although they were speaking in Korean and the helicopter noise meant the others couldn’t hear, regardless. “You joke seriously and pepper your most heartfelt thoughts with foolishness. How am I to understand when you are sincere?”

“Sorry. Chiun—”

“Sorry will not save your life.”

“What do you mean? What kind of danger am I in?”

Chiun glared at the bulkhead, frowning.

“You’re mad because I didn’t ask for money at the negotiating.”

Chiun waved it away.

“Then why?”

The ancient Korean turned to him quickly. “Because you disdain that which is ancient!”

“You?”

“I am not ancient! But someday I shall be and then I shall be consigned to science!”

“Little Father,” Remo said gently, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly. What does that even mean, consign you to science?”

Chiun pursed his raisinlike lips. “Remo, I see the domination of the machine growing. I see men everywhere blindly surrendering to it. There was wisdom in the past, and not all explanations can be translated into the language of technology.”

Remo nodded slightly. “Now I understand.”

“You do?” Chiun asked haughtily.

“I do. This is about Sa Mangsang.”

Chiun nodded but sighed. “Your words are right, Remo, but you do not understand. This is about the thing you named.” He waved around the interior of the helicopter, but somehow he was including all of the British Isles and all the world. “This is all caused by that entity. It is he who stirs the boiling gruel pots of humanity’s sanity.”

“I know, Chiun.”

“You don’t believe.”

“It’s kind of hard to believe that a sleepy South Seas squid has the Scots in a snit.”

“Joke if you must! And yet it is so.”

“I don’t see how.”

“It does not matter how. There is no plainer way to tell you than that—or to tell Emperor Smith. The knowing how is of no moment.”

“If it will help us learn what’s happening so we can do something about it,” Remo said.

“I have said what can be done—nothing. My words are not enough.”

“But not because they are your words—because Smitty can’t sit there and do nothing.”

“So he sends us out on busywork.”

“It’s something,” Remo said. “And Smitty doesn’t believe there’s a connection anyway.”

“He believes nothing, and you are little better. You only know or do not know. You only trust what some logistician or intellectual claims is truth. When you don’t have that truth, you force your problem into one of the boxes of science and chop off the unneeded details until it fits some explanation. But know this, Remo Williams—science explains nothing accurately.”

“Where would Smitty be without his computers, Little Father?”

“My fear is where you will be because of them. The Dream Thing stirs, and soon even Mad Harold’s idiot electronics shall decide that the blame for all this lies in that entity. He will send you there.”

“So?”

“There is nothing worse that could be done.”

Remo pondered this in silence. The helicopter was beginning its descent when he said, “Little Father, what would you ask of me?”

“To believe in that which is unproved.”

“To have faith.”

“Faith, yes,” Chiun agreed. Then he added hurriedly, “This is not about the carpenter from Galilee who now appears in blood-and-guts films.”

“Of course not. I know what it’s about.”

“We shall see,” Chiun said, only partially satisfied.

The satellite phone on the wall buzzed, and Chiun composed himself more perfectly. The SEAL team leader handed the receiver to Remo.

“General Rozinante for you, sir.”

“Thanks.”

The SEAL commander gave a hand signal to his team, and they quickly donned headgear and switched on a music feed. It was the oldies station out of London that considered itself to be ensconced in the culturally superior 1980s, and at this moment was playing a Spandau Ballet song to prove it.

“General Rosey-somebody?” Remo asked.

“Are they isolated?” Smith demanded, his sour voice tinged with a heaviness that made Remo worried.

“Yeah. They can’t hear us. But they couldn’t have anyway—you know we’re in a helicopter?”

“I know. This is bad, Remo. Very bad.”

Very bad. Smith was as emotionless as they came, but he was clearly concerned.

“How bad?”

“Worse than I had thought. Worse than my worst-case scenarios.”

Remo looked over the bulky phone at Chiun.

Smith was almost rambling. Smith never rambled. He pulled himself together in a hurry. “Here’s what we’ve got. Military research, under the castle at Loch Tweed. It’s a joint U.S.-British research effort. Whoever is responsible made damn sure it was a secret, even from the President.”

“Why?”

“The Folcroft Four sniffed it out,” Mark Howard said, coming on the line. “The security didn’t fit the cover story. It’s supposed to be nothing more than a U.S.-U.K. terrorist-response strategy-planning facility.”

“So if it’s not that, what is it?”

Together, Mark Howard and Harold Smith told them what it was. It took a minute for Remo to catch on.