The Hammer of God

“Yes. The printing company in Hong Kong had an unfortunate fire and the manuscript and all the copies of the first printing are gone. The folder I brought in is the only surviving copy of the text.”

“It is one of the first books ever banned by the United States?” another said.

“Can’t the author write it over again?” Peter asked.

“He died in a plane crash,” Ensiling said. “He was a commercial pilot and crashed in his private plane on a beautiful day with no weather problems, Peter. There are now only six copies of this book in the world.”

Eleven thought Peter, but his face remained like stone.

“How do you know the book is legitimate?” another man of science asked.

“Ahh, that is our task, gentlemen.”

Kasiko noticed Peter’s furrowed brow and faraway look, “What’s on your mind, Peter?”

“I was wondering; did the harmonics prove the grid, or did its harmony to the grid prove the saucers’ existence?”

“That’s very good, Peter; hold that thought.” Ensiling left and returned with a big lawyers’ briefcase. Out of it, he pulled a giant red loose-leaf book. Embossed in gold leaf on the front was the seal of the United Nations.

CHAPTER NINE

There But For The Sake Of Janice

Somebody’s cell phone rang and Peter jumped nervously, turning in the direction of the sound. The paranoia being infectious, Bill also was startled, but looked and saw nothing but tourists and a Boy Scout troop visiting the Memorial.

The interruption gave Hiccock a chance to get a word in edgewise. “Peter, is this professor, in the Queens apartment back in 1968, the one who smuggled in the book… Is he the same Professor Ensiling that just died?”

“Yes. That’s why I am here, telling you this story. He didn’t die — he was murdered.”

“Whoa. You know this for sure?”

“He was old, but he was in good shape. They got him.”

“Who got him?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t tell me.”

Peter stole a nervous glance away from Bill. “Four out of the five remaining committee members are dead. All within a half a year. Actuarially, those are lottery ticket odds. Bill, something is going on. I need you to help me.”

“Help you? What this got to do with you?”

“I think I might be next.”

“Why? You aren’t a professor, are you?” Bill realized there was a lot about “Peter Robot” he didn’t know. In fact, all Billy remembered about Peter before this meeting on the steps was that he had built a robot in sixth grade (hence his schoolyard nickname) and won all kinds of science fairs with a computer he built. He had faded into the haze of Bill’s Bronx memories until Cheryl said his name this morning.

Today a guy like Peter would set off alarm bells in every quarter of society, but back in the ’60s and ’70s people were still considered innocent until proven perverted. So it was, that, the mentally-advanced Peter was socially-retarded; outcast from his age group in the first known case of a nerd-ectomy in the U.S.A. Although jocks and cool guys shunned him, Peter actually had no need for them as well. On any given Friday or Saturday night he was content soldering and inventing in his room. But there was one group to which Peter Remo was the coolest guy, mostly because he was older — his younger brother Johnny’s friends, like Bill. These younger guys were enthralled by his stories and science wizardry. In addition, because he was older, he could take the rap for one of Johnny’s group and, for example, claim that the pack of Parliaments that hit the floor were his, or maybe give you a swig of beer. And if you hung with Peter, the bully guys, who were maybe a year older than you, were ‘a-scared’ of him.

So it was that Tommy Mush, Joey Plum, Billy Hic, Larry Soch, and B.O. all related to Peter as if he were also in the seventh grade.

The neighborhood was close knit. Everyone knew everyone and each parent was the parent of every kid as they played in the courtyard or on the sidewalks. Therefore, every parent knew Peter, his good nature, and his brains. In a word no one would ever use today, Peter was “harmless.”

In many ways, Peter was Bill’s entry point into the wonders of science. Bill spent many hours on the stoop of the apartment house with tape, wood, motors, batteries and buzzers building “electro-cities,” actually electric busy boxes that rang, beeped, lit up, spun, and blinked. At first, done under Peter’s careful guidance, they soon became a canvas upon which Bill would create newer and more complex circuits and combinations, at times surprising Peter with his ingenuity. Yet, Peter always had the next challenge, such as challenging him to make two lights alternate every time the buzzer rang. That one took Bill a week to figure out, but when he finally got it, the praise he got from Peter was like his winning the Nobel Prize in Science.