'That's good. It's doing what it's supposed to do.'
'Well, that makes a change around here.'
'Because I've got an idea. We'll bomb the motherfucker.'
'How's that?'
'We'll drop something to make a mess. Get it positioned underneath us, and then we'll nuke the sonofabitch. Drop something heavy right on top of it.'
'It might work.'
'Keep your head down, pal,' chuckled Curtis. 'I'll be back on air when we've got the Fat Man ready.'
'I think I know what will do the job,' said Helen.
She led them to a room near the elevators where a solitary object stood on a remover's trolley, awaiting its final destination.
The Buddha's head was over a metre high. It was all that remained of a thousand-year-old bronze statue of the Tang dynasty that must have been enormous. Curtis took hold of the usnisa, the protuberance on top of the Buddha's head that marked the attainment of supreme wisdom, and rocked the object gently.
'You're right,' he told Helen, 'it's perfect. It must weigh a couple of hundred pounds.'
Joan shook her head with horror. She didn't know which part of her was more outraged: the Buddhist or the art lover.
'No, you can't,' she said. 'It's priceless. Tell them, Jenny. It's a holy object.'
'Strictly speaking,' said Jenny, 'Buddhism and Taoism are diametrically opposed. I can't see anything wrong with doing this, Joan.'
'Ray, tell them.'
Richardson shrugged. 'I say we use Bud here to nail the droid before it nails Mitch.'
They wheeled the statue to the balcony and, while Curtis and
Richardson positioned the head at a point on the edge of the level a little further along from where Arnon had fallen to his death, Jenny searched the kitchen where the air was now quite breathable for something that would make a mess on the droid's clean floor. Bomb bait, Curtis called it. She returned with a couple of ketchup bottles.
'This should really piss that thing off,' she said.
Mitch watched the droid turn around from the clean floor under the piano and scan the explosion of glass and ketchup on the immaculate white marble with its video camera. Immediately it moved towards the mess, inspecting the perimeters of the large red cleaning task that now lay before it.
'Wait for my signal,' said Mitch. 'It's still on the edge of the mess. We'll let the fucker get right in the middle before you hit it.'
But the droid remained motionless on the edge of the ketchup. It was almost as if it suspected a trap.
'What's it doing?' asked Jenny on the walkie-talkie.
'I think it's — '
Suddenly, the droid sped into the centre of the huge ketchup splash and Mitch yelled, ' Now! Do it now!'
The head of the Lord Buddha seemed to take for ever to fall to the ground. As if it was on invisible wires, moving very little in the air, it fell with a serenity, as if calling the earth to witness the climactic event of its last journey, until, with a tremendous impact, it struck the SAM droid in a huge balloon burst of metal and plastics.
Mitch ducked behind the pond wall as pieces of debris flew overhead. When he looked again the droid had disappeared.
As soon as the air in the boardroom was completely breathable again, Bob Beech announced that he wanted to return to the terminal, to continue with his attempts to fathom Ishmael's thought processes. Curtis tried to dissuade him. 'You're going back in there? To play chess?'
'My position is better than I thought it would be. Ishmael's game seems rather hesitant. In fact, I'm sure of it.'
'Suppose Ishmael pulls another stunt like before? Suppose he gasses you. What then? Have you thought of that?'
'Look, I don't actually think he meant to kill anyone but Willis Ellery.'
'And that makes it OK?'
'No, of course not. All I'm saying is that I think I'll be safe enough as long as we're playing the game. Besides… I don't suppose you'd understand.'
'Try me,' challenged Curtis.
'It's more than just a game. I created this monster, Curtis. If it does have a soul I think I have a right to know about it. The maker would like to have a conversation with his creature, if you like. After all, it was me who promoted Ishmael from the darkness. Despite everything that he's done, I can't treat him as my enemy. I want Ishmael to speak to me, to explain himself. We can have a dialogue. Maybe I can find a way of defusing the time bomb.'
Curtis shrugged. 'It's your funeral,' he said.
When Beech sat down in front of the screen again the quaternion turned towards him. Then it nodded, as if welcoming him back to the game. Beech surveyed the pieces for a moment, although he had memorized the board and already knew the move he was planning to make. He had the idea that Ishmael might have made a mistake.
Beech clicked the mouse and moved his King to Knight 1.
He was glad that the rest of them were too afraid to come back. Now he had the chance to be alone with his electronic Prometheus. Besides, he had his own private set of priorities to present to his creation.
The head had been hollow, like a great chocolate egg: the face had broken off as one complete shard and Mitch saw how details like the lips and eyes of the Buddha could be traced in relief on the inside of the metal. He limped across the floor, picking his way among the combined wreckage of the Buddha's head and the SAM droid and wondering what was the statute on the feng shui for desecrating the image of the Far East's pre-eminent holy man.
Behind the horse-shoe shaped, heat-resistant ceramic desk, there was no sign of Kelly Pendry's hologram. Mitch was almost relieved. At least he wouldn't have to endure her relentlessly sunny personality. But the hologram was supposed to be triggered by anyone entering the gradient field that limited the boundaries of Kelly Pendry's interaction. If the hologram was not operating, then the front door had to be open.
'Fat chance,' he said out loud, but he walked over to the front door anyway, just to make sure.
It was still locked. He pressed his nose to the tinted glass of the door, trying to see if there was anyone on the piazza, but knowing that this was unlikely. He could just make out the raised hydraulic blocks of the piazza's Deterrent Paving that were doing their uneven job in making the area generally inhospitable. A couple of times he saw the flashing lights of a police patrol car on Hope Street, and the sight was enough to make him start hammering on the door with the flat of the hand, and shout for help. But even as he did he knew he was wasting his time. The plate glass didn't even vibrate under his blows. He might as well have been striking a concrete wall.
'Mitch?' squawked the walkie-talkie unit. 'Are you all right? What's happening?' It was Jenny again. 'I heard you shout.'
'It's nothing,' he said. 'I lost my head for a minute, that's all. It was just being near the front door, I guess.'
Optimistically, he added, 'I'll call you when I've got the laser working.'
He replaced the walkie-talkie on Dukes's utility belt and turned towards the desk, asking himself if he really had half an idea of what he was doing. His experience of working with lasers was rudimentary, to say the least. Ray Richardson had probably been right. In all likelihood he would only succeed in blinding himself. Or worse. But what else was there to do?
It was then that Mitch received a fright that made his heart leap against the ladder of his ribs like a spawning salmon.
Standing behind the desk in place of the syrupy presenter of Good Morning, America was an alien monster from some science-fiction nightmare, a grey-skinned, double-jawed, dragon-tailed beast, complete with holographic drool and Dolby Stereo heavy breathing. At least seven feet tall, the creature eyed Mitch malevolently and extended its retractable jaws suggestively. Mitch recoiled from the desk as if he had been snapped back by a safety line.