"A cake," Birkson said. "We have to have a cake. Hold on a minute, I'll be right back." He strode quickly toward Bach, took her elbow and turned her, pulled her insistently away with him. "You have to get those officers away from here," he said, conversationally. "They're tense. They could explode at any minute. In fact," and he favored her with his imbecile grin, "they're probably more dangerous right now than the bomb."
"You mean you think it's a fake?"
"No. It's for real. I know the psychological pattern. After this much trouble, he won't want to be a dud. Other types, they're in it for the attention and they'd just as soon fake it. Not Hans. But what I mean is, I have him. I can get him. But I can't count on your officers. Pull them back and leave only two or three of your most trusted people."
"All right." She had decided again, more from a sense of helpless futility than anything else, to trust him. He had pulled a neat diversion with the flower shop and the X-ray.
"We may have him already," he went on, as they reached the end of the street and turned the corner. "Often, the X-ray is enough. It cooks some of the circuitry and makes it unreliable. I'd hope to kill him outright, but he's shielded. Oh, he's probably got a lethal dosage, but it'd take him days to die. That doesn't do us any good. And if his circuitry is knocked out, the only way to find out is to wait. We have to do better than that. Here's what I want you to do."
He stopped abruptly and relaxed, leaning against the wall and gazing out over the trees and artificial sunlight of the Plaza. Bach could hear songbirds. They had always made her feel good before. Now all she could think of was incinerated corpses. Birkson ticked off points on his fingers.
She listened to him carefully. Some of it was strange, but no worse than she had already witnessed. And he really did have a plan. He really did. The sense of relief was so tremendous that it threatened to create a mood of euphoria in her, one not yet justified by the circumstances. She nodded curtly to each of his suggestions, then again to the officer who stood beside her, confirming what Birkson had said and turning it into orders. The young man rushed off to carry them out and Birkson started to return to the bomb. Bach grabbed him.
"Why wouldn't you let Hans answer my question about who did the surgical work on him? Was that part of your plan?" The question was half belligerent.
"Oh. Yeah, it was, in a way. I just grabbed the opportunity to make him feel closer to me. But it wouldn't have done you any good. He'll have a block against telling that, for sure. It could even be set to explode the bomb if he tries to answer that question. Hans is a maniac, but don't underestimate the people who helped him get where he is now. They'll be protected."
"Who are they?"
Birkson shrugged. It was such a casual, uncaring gesture that Bach was annoyed again.
"I have no idea. I'm not political, Ann. I don't know the Antiabortion Movement from the Freedom for Mauretania League. They build 'em, I take 'em apart. It's as simple as that. Your job is to find out how it happened. I guess you ought to get started on that."
"We already have," she conceded. "I just thought that... well, coming from Earth, where this sort of thing happens all the time, that you might know... damn it, Birkson. Why? Why is this happening?"
He laughed, while Bach turned red and went into a slow boil. Any of her officers, seeing her expression, would have headed for the nearest blast shelter. But Birkson laughed on. Didn't he give a damn about anything?
"Sorry," he forced out. "I've heard that question before, from other police chiefs. It's a good question." He waited, a half-smile on his face. When she didn't say anything, he went on. "You don't have the right perspective on this, Ann."
"That's Chief Bach to you, damn you."
"Okay," he said, easily. "What you don't see is that this thing is no different from a hand grenade tossed into a crowd, or a bomb sent through the mail. It's a form of communication. It's just that today, with so many people, you have to shout a little louder to get any attention."
"But... who? They haven't even identified themselves. You're saying that Hans is a tool of these people. He's been wired into the bomb, with his own motives for exploding. Obviously he didn't have the resources to do this himself, I can see that."
"Oh, you'll hear from them. I don't think they expect him to be successful. He's a warning. If they were really serious they could find the sort of person they want, one who's politically committed and will die for the cause. Of course, they don't care if the bomb goes off; they'll be pleasantly surprised if it does. Then they can stand up and pound their chests for a while. They'll be famous."
"But where did they get the uranium? The security is..."
For the first time, Birkson showed a trace of annoyance. "Don't be silly. The path leading to today was irrevocably set in 1945. There was never any way to avoid it. The presence of a tool implies that it will be used. You can try your best to keep it in the hands of what you think of as responsible people, but it'll never work. And it's no different, that's what I'm saying. This bomb is just another weapon. It's a cherry bomb in an anthill. It's gonna cause one hill of ants a hell of a lot of trouble, but it's no threat to the race of ants."
Bach could not see it that way. She tried, but it was still a nightmare of entirely new proportions to her. How could he equate the killing of millions of people with a random act of violence where three or four might be hurt? She was familiar with that. Bombs went off every day in her city, as in every human city. People were always dissatisfied.
"I could walk down... no, it's up here, isn't it?" Birkson mused for a moment on cultural differences. "Anyway, give me enough money and I'll bet I could go up to your slum neighborhoods right this minute and buy you as many kilos of uranium or plutonium as you want. Which is something you ought to be doing, by the way. Anything can be bought. Anything. For the right price, you could have bought weapons-grade material on the black market as early as 1960 or so. It would have been very expensive; there wasn't much of it. You'd have had to buy a lot of people. But now... well, you think it out." He stopped, and seemed embarrassed by his outburst.
"I've read a little about this," he apologized. She did think it out as she followed him back to the cordon. What he said was true. When controlled fusion proved too costly for wide-scale use, humanity had opted for fast breeder reactors. There had been no other choice. And from that moment, nuclear bombs in the hands of terrorists had been the price humanity accepted. And the price they would continue to pay.
"I wanted to ask you one more question," she said. He stopped and turned to face her. His smile was dazzling.
"Ask away. But are you going to take me up on that bet?"
She was momentarily unsure of what he meant. "Oh. Are you saying you'd help us locate the underground uranium ring? I'd be grateful..."
"No, no. Oh, I'll help you. I'm sure I can make a contact. I used to do that before I got into this game. What I meant was, are you going to bet I can't find some? We could bet... say, a dinner together as soon as I've found it. Time limit of seven days. How about it?"
She thought she had only two alternatives: walk away from him, or kill him. But she found a third.
"You're a betting man. I guess I can see why. But that's what I wanted to ask you. How can you stay so calm? Why doesn't this get to you like it does to me and my people? You can't tell me it's simply that you're used to it."