A dartgun.
He stared at the thing for long, long seconds, unwilling to believe it—to even comprehend it.
“Phil, look at this,” Cullen said, shoving a frag slug clip and a pistol into the captain’s hands.
“Help me strip him,” Jacobs said suddenly, laying the pistol and clip on the floor.
“Huh?”
“Come on.”
Jacobs bent to the corpse, hands trembling as he and Cullen peeled away the bloody garments. As he had suspected, the body bore no scars from weapon implantation. There were only the gashes of the frag slugs from Jacobs’ own gun—and the wounds of wood splinters from the shattered desk.
“He wasn’t a killerbot,” Cullen said, his eyes too wide, his mouth hanging too far open.
“He was just a man,” Jacobs agreed.
“But why?”
“I—I think maybe I see it. The psych boys may be more detailed—”
“What?” Cullen shifted his weight from one foot to the other, coughed.
Jacobs couldn’t take his eyes from the hands of the corpse, the hands that had held the throbbing guns. “We were in war with Euro. A normal war—if any wars are normal. Then Euro command changed the character of armed conflict. They came up with the killerbots. The enemy could be living next door now, waiting. Life took on a fluid, unstable quality.” He looked to the hands, could not take his eyes from the trigger fingers.
Cullen coughed.
“Our government played the game too. Nortamer took its criminals, political prisoners, and outcasts, made them into our own killerbots. Both sides admitted that human life was unimportant compared to the robo-factories and towering cities. The inanimate must be preserved while the flesh died. It became a war of attrition. Women and children—
“Women and children were not spared by either side,” Jacobs continued. “The family could dissolve in an instant. We became frustrated with the high degree of instability of society. As we lost our loved ones and were powerless to stop the loss, we were frustrated because there was no one to be angry with. The enemy was amongst us; the enemy was us. Sooner or later—psychosis.”
“And the man here pretended to be a killerbot because he could shirk his responsibilities and strike back, dump his frustration. But if this catches on—”
Jacobs shuddered. “Exactly.”
He stood, left Cullen with the body, and left the Medarts Building.
Outside, the rain was still falling, the fog thicker than ever. At the first barricade, he sent the psych boys up to the tenth floor. As he was crawling into his car, Burtram, Captain of the Westside Sector, pulled his car alongside. “It’s over,” Jacobs said.
“Strangest thing tonight,” Burtrum said, leaning out of the window, his hair plastered to his head. “We brought down two killerbots over near the sports arena, but they—”
“Weren’t really killerbots, Jacobs finished.
“How’d you hear?”
“We just had the same thing.”
“Gives me the shivers. Wonder what the psych boys will find out?”
Jacobs shrugged, started the car, and pulled out, sweeping in a U-turn and heading down Sycamore Avenue toward the ramp of the autoway. His mind boiled. When frustrations reached an unbearable limit, when family could be dissolved in a hail of bullets at any moment, the human mind rebelled against responsibility. Men took a holiday, indulged in a season for freedom—freedom from everything, freedom to do anything. And now it had begun. He didn’t want to think about where and when it might end.
The autoway lay ahead. He punched the key for an extended drive without chosen exit, and took his hands from the wheel. The car moved into the high-speed lane.
Again, the gray rain was peppered with sleet.
Jacobs rolled down the window. He took out his frag slug gun, rested the barrel on the sill. A car came spinning along the black roadway, going the other direction.
He pumped four slugs into it.
The vehicle whined. The autodrive mechanism had been shattered in its dashboard. The wheels locked. It kicked upward, rolled end over end along the autoway. Fire gushed out of it in crimson and amber waves. The flames on the wet pavement reminded him of a carnival midway on a damp Saturday. He had a glimpse of a carousel. Painted horses. Ken/child, grinning. . . .