“Why is everyone against the project?”
“They say it can’t be done. Robots can’t handle Security, and it’s a waste of company time pursuing it.”
“Surely he has something that makes him believe it’s possible.”
“All I know is he keeps saying…”
James suddenly broke off his oration in mid-sentence. His eyes searched Hosato’s with a new intensity.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Is what what?”
“The security robots. Is that what you’re doing here. Is that why you’re pumping me for information?”
Hosato heaved a great sigh and stood up. “James, I think this has gone far enough. I don’t know what problems there are between you and your father, and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that it’s highly improbable you’ll convince me to be an accomplice if you want to run away from here.”
“But—”
Hosato halted the interruption with an upraised hand.
“I’ve listened to you, now it’s my turn. Yes. You’re right. I know karate. I usually don’t admit it because I’m sick of everybody assuming anyone with yellow skin is a karate expert. I used it on you that first day for the same reason Suzi gimmicked the tapes. I needed the job. I was hungry, and the only other way I could get money was killing people, and I’m sick of it.”
He fixed James with a hard stare.
“Now, if you want to report that to Sasha and get me tossed out of a job, go ahead. I don’t want it bad enough to put up with being called a thief and a liar.”
He started for the door, with Suzi floating at his heels. At the last moment, another thought occurred to him.
“Remember this conversation, James. Remember what I have to do, what I have to put up with just to eat. Then think long and hard before you make any serious moves toward an independent life.”
“But what if one of the units breaks down?”
Hosato interjected the question casually as he ordered another round of drinks through the keyboard mounted on the table. At this time of day the bar was empty and they could talk uninterrupted.
“Not much chance of that.” His companion grimaced. “And even if it did, nothing much would happen.”
There was a soft warning gong, and the square in the center of the table sank slowly from sight. A few moments later, it sighed back into position, the empty glasses gone and fresh drinks standing in their place.
“Nothing much?” Hosato prompted. “With no one monitoring the manufacturing area, I should think it would have major problems, if not a permanent work stoppage.”
The little bearded maintenance man shook his head slightly, but not enough to interrupt his drinking.
“That’s what I’m telling you, Hayama,” he said, putting down his glass at last. “The new system’s modularized with parallel units and flow monitors. If anything goes wrong, anything at all, the damn machines pull the entire unit and slap another one in place. Down time would only be about fifteen minutes thirty at the max.”
Hosato shook his head, setting his glass down without drinking.
“I don’t know, Rick. It still sounds to me like you could get yourself in a lot of trouble. You’ve got a Mexican standoff between Maintenance and Security over who’s responsible for watching the manufacturing area. If anything goes wrong, someone’s going to get blamed, and from where I sit, that’ll be Maintenance.”
“Don’t worry about it,” his friend insisted. “Nothing major can go wrong, not the way it’s set up now. At best, a mechanical failure would be a nuisance. We’re just hoping there’ll be enough nuisances to prove our point.”
“How can you be that sure. I mean, surely there’s some point of vulnerability that could send things into a tailspin.”
“Let me tell you, Hayama. I’ve been working here for twelve years. I’ve seen almost everything imaginable go wrong at one time or another—the plumbing, the machines, the life-support systems everything. But I haven’t seen anything yet break down that couldn’t be fixed or replaced in minimal time, and that was before the modular system. I remember one time—”
A high beeping interrupted his oration. With a sigh he thumbed a button on the side of his belt pager and stood up.
“No rest for the wicked, I guess,” he grumbled, tossing down the last of his drink. Then he reached forward and punched the keyboard with practiced ease. “I’ll get this tab. Have one more on me, okay. I’ve got to run.”
Hosato smiled and waved as the maintenance man departed. As soon as he was out of sight, however, the smile dropped from his face like a mask.
The table bonged again as his fresh drink rose into view, but he didn’t even look at it. Instead, he stared intently at the far wall as he tried to organize his thoughts.
Well, Suzi, he thought, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that no one’s watching the manufacturing areas. The bad news is that, according to the maintenance crew, the production lines can’t be gimmicked.
That was their opinion. Hosato would have to be convinced. There was a big difference between coin- cidental machine failure and deliberate sabotage.
Unfortunately, that also meant he was going to have to scout it himself. He had hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. That’s why he had sought out the talkative little mechanic, sprawled in his favorite bar. The right words would have saved him a lot of trouble. “If the Z units go, we’re all out of work. If you look sideways at the W runners, they stop dead… I keep telling them there’s no backup for the four-wheels, but no one listens” Any phrase like that would have given him a target. Instead, he was going to have to do his own dirty work.
Well, he hadn’t really expected the answer to fall into his lap. He had hoped, but he hadn’t really counted on it. That’s why he was wearing his Ninja suit.
He stood up and reached for his employee card, then remembered Handel had already paid for the drinks. Rick was a nice guy. It was a shame he was going to have to put him out of work, along with the rest of Mc. Crae Enterprises.
Hosato paused for a moment after emerging from the bar’s dimness to let his eyes adjust to the light. One of Sasha’s guards was walking past and swept him with an impersonal gaze. Hosato smiled and nodded a greeting, which was ignored.
He wasn’t worried about detection, yet. At the moment, his Ninja suit looked like an ordinary turtleneck jumpsuit with wide turnback cuffs. This was no accident. Part of invisibility was being able to blend with the general populace before and after the job, and the suit was designed to enable him to do precisely that.
Setting his legs for a purposeful stride, he left the mall and living quarters and headed into the tunnels leading to the other buildings of the complex. There were occasional security guards about, but none paid him particular attention.
The boldness of a daytime scouting mission had its advantages. If seen, he would be assumed to be going about normal business. At night, the only ones moving about would be him and the guards, which would immediately arouse suspicions.
As he navigated the tunnels, he debated trying for one of the buildings housing a product family other than Turner’s. It would be better if he practiced his trade in another area to avoid throwing immediate suspicion on himself as a member of Turner’s staff. As quickly as the thought occurred to him, he rejected it. Before he could make his penetration, he first had to traverse the corridors. If he were seen in a building other than where the guards were used to seeing him, the balloon would go up and he’d have a great deal of difficulty explaining his presence. No, it would have to be Turner’s building.