"No. Something always distracted me. So when I heard of this place where they would cyborg me and get rid of all that, I jumped at the chance."
Inactivity was making Bach impulsive. She had to say or do something.
"Where did you get the work done, Hans?" she ventured. The bomb started to say something, but Birkson laughed loudly and slapped Bach hard on the back. "Oh, no, Chief. That's pretty tricky, right Hans? She's trying to get you to rat. That's not done, Chief. There's a point of honor involved."
"Who is that?" the bomb asked, suspiciously.
"Let me introduce Chief Anna-Louise Bach, of the New Dresden Police. Ann, meet Hans."
"Police?" Hans asked, and Bach felt goose-pimples when she detected a note of fright in the voice. What was this maniac trying to do, frightening the guy like that? She was close to pulling Birkson off the case. She held off because she thought she could see a familiar pattern in it, something she could use as a way to participate, even if ignominously. It was the good guy-bad guy routine, one of the oldest police maneuvers in the book.
"Aw, don't be like that," Birkson said to Hans. "Not all cops are brutes. Ann here, she's a nice person. Give her a chance. She's only doing her job."
"Oh, I have no objection to police," the bomb said. "They are necessary to keep the social machine functioning. Law and order is a basic precept of the coming new Mechanical Society. I'm pleased to meet you, Chief Bach. I wish the circumstances didn't make us enemies."
"Pleased to meet you, Hans." She thought carefully before she phrased her next question. She wouldn't have to take the hardline approach to contrast herself with affable, buddy-buddy Birkson. She needn't be an antagonist, but it wouldn't hurt if she asked questions that probed at his motives.
"Tell me, Hans. You say you're not a Luddite. You say you like machines. Do you know how many machines you'll destroy if you set yourself off? And even more important, what you'll do to this social machine you've been talking about? You'll wipe out the whole city."
The bomb seemed to be groping for words. He hesitated, and Bach felt the first glimmer of hope since this insanity began.
"You don't understand. You're speaking from an organic viewpoint. Life is important to you. A machine is not concerned with life. Damage to a machine, even the social machine, is simply something to be repaired. In a way, I hope to set an example. I wanted to become a machine—"
"And the best, the very ultimate machine," Birkson put in, "is the atomic bomb. It's the end point of all mechanical thinking."
"Exactly," said the bomb, sounding very pleased. It was nice to be understood. "I wanted to be the very best machine I could possibly be, and it had to be this."
"Beautiful, Hans," Birkson breathed. "I see what you're talking about. So if we go on with that line of thought we logically come to the conclusion..." and he was off into an exploration of the fine points of the new Mechanistic world view.
Bach was trying to decide which was the crazier of the two, when she was handed another message. She read it, then tried to find a place to break into the conversation. But there was no convenient place. Birkson was more and more animated, almost frothing at the mouth as he discovered points of agreement between the two of them. Bach noticed her officers standing around nervously, following the conversation. It was clear from their expressions that they feared they were being sold out, that when zero hour arrived they would still be here watching intellectual ping-pong. But long before that, she could have a mutiny on her hands. Several of them were fingering their weapons, probably without even knowing it.
She touched Birkson on the sleeve, but he waved her away. Damn it, this was too much. She grabbed him and nearly pulled him from his feet, swung him around until her mouth was close to his ear and growled.
"Listen to me, you idiot, they're going to take the picture. You'll have to stand back some. It's better if we're all shielded."
"Leave me alone," he shot back, and pulled from her grasp. But he was still smiling. "This is just getting interesting," he said, in a normal tone of voice.
Birkson came near to dying in that moment. Three guns were trained on him from the circle of officers, awaiting only the order to fire. They didn't like seeing their Chief treated that way.
Bach herself was damn near to giving the order. The only thing that stayed her hand was the knowledge that with Birkson dead, the machine might go off ahead of schedule. The only thing to do now was to get him out of the way and go on as best she could, knowing that she was doomed to failure. No one could say she hadn't given the expert a chance.
"But what I was wondering about," Birkson was saying, "was why today? What happened today? Is this the day Cyrus McCormick invented the combine harvester, or something?"
"It's my birthday," Hans said, somewhat shyly.
"Your birthday?" Birkson managed to look totally amazed to learn what he already knew. "Your birthday. That's great, Hans. Many happy returns of the day, my friend." He turned and took in all of the officers with an expansive sweep of his hands. "Let's sing, people. Come on, it's his birthday, for heaven's sake. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Hans..."
He bellowed, he was off-key, he swept his hands in grand circles with no sense of rhythm. But so infectious was his mania that several of the officers found themselves joining in. He ran around the circle, pulling the words out of them with great scooping motions of his hands.
Bach bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep herself steady. She had been singing, too. The scene was so ridiculous, so blackly improbable...
She was not the only one who was struck the same way. One of her officers, a brave man who she knew personally to have shown courage under fire, fell on his face in a dead faint. A woman officer covered her face with her hands and fled down the corridor, making helpless coughing sounds. She found an alcove and vomited.
And still Birkson capered. Bach had her gun halfway out of the shoulder holster, when he shouted.
"What's a birthday without a party?" he asked. "Let's have a big party." He looked around, fixed on the flower shop. He started for it, and as he passed Bach he whispered, "Take the picture now."
It galvanized her. She desperately wanted to believe he knew what he was doing, and just at the moment when his madness seemed total he had shown her the method. A distraction. Please, let it be a distraction. She turned and gave the prearranged signal to the officer standing at the edge of Prosperity Plaza.
She turned back in time to see Birkson smash in the window of the flower shop with his putter. It made a deafening crash.
"Goodness," said Hans, who sounded truly shocked. "Did you have to do that? That's private property."
"What does it matter?" Birkson yelled. "Hell, man, you're going to do much worse real soon. I'm just getting things started." He reached in and pulled out an armload of flowers, signaling to others to give him a hand. The police didn't like it, but soon were looting the shop and building a huge wreath just outside the line of barriers.
"I guess you're right," said Hans, a little breathlessly. A taste of violence had excited him, whetted his appetite for more to come. "But you startled me. I felt a real thrill, like I haven't felt since I was human."
"Then let's do it some more." And Birkson ran up and down one side of the street, breaking out every window he could reach. He picked up small articles he found inside the shops and threw them. Some of them shattered when they hit.
He finally stopped. Leystrasse had been transformed. No longer the scrubbed and air-conditioned Lunar environment, it had become as shattered, as chaotic and uncertain as the tension-filled emotional atmosphere it contained. Bach shuddered and swallowed the rising taste of bile. It was a precursor of things to come, she was sure. It hit her deeply to see the staid and respectable Leystrasse ravaged.