"Let's move out," said Mancuso. "The robot's controllers and Kamatori's human pals will wonder why his private hunt has been shut down and come running to investigate."
Stacy stepped to the door leading outside Kamatori's personal quarters, opened it slightly, and peered around the garden outside. "Our first hurdle is to find the building with the elevator to the underground center. We were led up here from our cells blindfolded and didn't get a feel for its exact location."
"I'll lead you to it," said Pitt.
"You know the location?"
"I should. I rode it down to the hospital."
"Your magnet won't be of much help if we run into a squad of robots," Mancuso said grimly.
"Then we'll have to expand our bag of tricks," said Pitt. He moved over beside Stacy and looked through the cracked door. "There's a garden hose just under that bush to your left. See it?"
Stacy nodded. "Beside the terrace."
He gestured at the katana she still held in her hand. "Sneak out and slice off a few feet."
She stared at him quizzically. "May I ask why?"
"Cut up the hose in short lengths, rub one against a piece of silk, and you strip out the negative electrons," Pitt explained. "Then touch the end of the hose against a robot's integrated circuits, making the electrons jump and destroy the delicate components."
"An electrostatic discharge," murmured Weatherhill thoughtfully. "Is that it?"
Pitt nodded. "You could do the same thing by rubbing a cat or dragging your feet across a carpet."
"You'd make a good high school physics teacher."
"What about the silk?" asked Giordino.
"Kamatori's kimono," Weatherhill said over his shoulder as he hurried into the trophy room.
Pitt turned to Mancuso. "Where do you intend to set off your firecrackers where they'll do the most damage?"
"We don't have enough C-Eight to do a permanent job, but if we can place it near a power supply, we can set back their schedule for a few days, maybe weeks."
Stacy returned with a three-meter section of garden hose. "How do you want it sliced?"
"Divide it into four parts," Pitt answered. "One for each of you. I'll carry the magnet as a backup."
Weatherhill came back from the trophy room carrying torn shreds of Kamatori's silk kimono, some showing bloodstains, and began passing them out. He smiled at Pitt. "Your placement of our samurai friend made him a most appropriate piece of wall decor."
"There is no sculpture," Pitt said pontifically, "that can take the place of an original."
"I don't want to be within a thousand kilometers when Hideki Suma sees what you've done to his best friend." Giordino laughed, throwing the broken remains of the two roboguards into a pile in a corner of the room.
"Yes," Pitt said indifferently, "but that's what he gets for pissing off the dark side of the fence."
Loren, her face still and angered, observed in mounting shock the awesome technical and financial power behind Suma's empire as he led her and Diaz on a tour through a complex that was far more vast than she could ever imagine. There was much more to it than a control center to send, prime, and detonate signals to a worldwide array of nuclear bombs. The seemingly unending levels and corridors also contained countless laboratories, vast engineering and electronic experimental units, a fusion research facility, and a nuclear reactor plant incorporating designs still on the drawing boards of the Western industrialized countries.
Suma said proudly, "My primary structural engineering and administration offices and scientific think tank are housed in Edo City. But here, safe and secure under Soseki Island, is the core of my research and development."
He ushered them into a lab and pointed out a large open vat of crude oil. "You can't see them, but eating away at the oil are second-generation genetically engineered microbes that actually digest the petroleum and multiply, launching a chain reaction and destroying the oil molecules. The residue can then be dissolved by water."
"That could prove a boon for the cleanup of oil spills," commented Diaz.
"One useful purpose," said Suma. "Another is to deplete a hostile country's oil reserves."
Loren looked at him in disbelief. "Why cause such chaos? For what gain?"