Mortality

by Walter Jon Williams

RUN.

Consciousness stitched a lightning path across his mind. It seemed to come in bursts, like lines of text from a very fast laser printer … but no, it was more complex than that. A master weaver was forming the largest and most intricate tapestry in the universe, all in a matter of seconds, and doing it all in his brain.

He opened his eyes. St. Elmo’s fire shimmered before him like a polar aurora. A screaming noise assaulted his ears. Subsonics moved through his body like tidal waves.

The noise faded. Internals ran lightspeed checks. Radar painted an image in his brain, superimposed it on the visuals.

“All monitored systems are functioning,” he found himself saying.

The St. Elmo’s fluorescence faded, revealing sagging bare roof beams, an half-open skylight with the glass painted black from the inside, diagrams tacked up helter-skelter, drooping electric cables. Electric fans made a busy stir in the air. Something in the room moved, imaged first by radar, then by visuals. He recognized the figure, the tall, white-haired man with the hawk nose and disdainful eyes. Maxim Travnicek. A frigid smile curled Travnicek’s lips. He spoke with a middle-European accent.

“Welcome back, toaster. The land of the living awaits.”

“I blew up.” Modular Man examined this possibility with cold impartiality as he pulled on a jumpsuit. A fly buzzed in the distance.

“You blew up,” said Travnicek. “Modular Man the invincible android blew himself to bits. In a big fight at Aces High with the Astronomer and the Egyptian Masons. Lucky I had a backup of your memory.”

Memories poured over the android’s macroatomic switches. Modular Man recognized Travnicek’s new Jokertown loft, the one he’d moved into after being evicted from the bigger place on the Lower East Side. The place was stiflingly hot, and electric fans plugged into overworked extension cords did little to make the place seem like home. Equipment, the big flux generators and computers, were jammed together on home-built platforms and raw plywood shelving. The ultrasonics had burst the picture tubes in two of the monitors.

“The Astronomer?” he said. “He hadn’t been seen in months. I have no recollection of his return.”

Travnicek made a dismissive gesture. “The fight happened after I last backed up your memory.”

“I blew up?” The android didn’t want to think about this. “How could I blow up?”

“Right. A surprise to both of us. Half-intelligent microwave ovens aren’t supposed to explode.”

Travnicek sat on a thirdhand plastic chair, a cigarette in his hand. He was thinner than before, his reddened eyes sunk deep in hollows. He looked years older. His straight hair, usually combed back from his forehead, stuck out in tufts. He seemed to have been doing his own barbering.

Travnicek wore baggy, army-green surplus trousers and a cream-colored formal shirt with food stains and frills on the front. He wasn’t wearing a tie.

The android had never seen Travnicek without a tie. Something must have happened to the man, he realized. And then a frightening thought came to him.

“How long have I been…?”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“You blew up last Wild Card Day. Now it’s June fifteenth.”

“Nine months.” The android was horrified.

Travnicek seemed irritated. He threw away his cigarette and ground the stub into the bare plywood floor. “How long do you think it takes to build a blender of your capabilities? Jesus Christ, it took weeks just to decipher the notes I wrote last time.” He gave an expansive wave of his hand. “Look at this place. I’ve been working day and night.”

Fast food containers were everywhere, a bewildering variety that strongly represented Chinese places, pizza joints, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Flies buzzed among the cartons. In and among the containers were bits of scrap, yellow legal paper, pieces of paper bags, torn cigarette cartons, and the insides of matchbooks. All with notes that Travnicek had made to himself during his fever of construction, half of them ground into the naked floor and covered with footprints. The electric fans Travnicek used to move the sluggish air in the place had done a good job of scattering them.

Travnicek stood up and turned away, lighting another cigarette. “The place needs a good cleaning,” he said. “You know where the broom is.”

“Yes, sir.” Resigned to it.

“I’ve got about fifty bucks left after paying the rent on this fucking heap. Enough for a little celebration.” He jingled change in his pockets. “Gotta make a little phone call.” Travnicek leered. “You’re not the only one with girlfriends.”

Modular Man ran his internal checks again, looked down at his body in the half-zipped jumpsuit.

Nothing seemed out of place.

Still, he thought, something was wrong.

He went after the broom.

Half an hour later, carrying two plastic trash bags full of fast food cartons, the android opened the skylight, floated through it, crossed the roof, then dropped down the air shaft that led to the alley behind. His intention was to toss the trash in a Dumpster that he knew waited in the alley.

His feet touched broken concrete. Sounds echoed down the alley. Heavy breathing, a guttural moan. A strange, lyric, birdlike sound.

In Jokertown the sounds could mean anything. The victim of an assault bleeding against the brownstone wall; the sad and horrible joker Snotman struggling for breath; a derelict passed out and having a nightmare; a customer from Freakers who’d had too much liquor or too many grotesque sights and had stumbled away to upchuck his guts …

The android was cautious. He lowered the trash bags silently to the pavement and floated silently a few feet above the surface. Rotating his body to the horizontal, he peered out into the alleyway.

The heavy breathing was coming from Travnicek. He had a woman up against the wall, lunging into her with his trousers down around his ankles.

The woman wore an elaborate custom mask over her lower face: a joker. The upper half of her face was not disfigured, but it wasn’t pretty, either. She was not young. She wore a tube top and a glittery silver jacket and a red miniskirt. Her plastic boots were white. The trilling sound came from behind the mask. Short-time in an alley was probably costing Travnicek about fifteen dollars.

Travnicek muttered something in Czech. The woman’s face was impassive. She regarded the alley wall with dreamy eyes. The musical sound she was making was something she probably did all the time, a sound unconnected with what she was doing. The android decided he didn’t want to watch this anymore.

He left the garbage in the airshaft. The trilling sound pursued him like a flight of birds.

Someone had stuck a red, white, and blue poster on the plastic hood over the pay phone: BARNETT FOR PRESIDENT. The android didn’t know who Barnett was. His plastic fingertips jabbed the coin slot on the pay phone. There was a click, then a ringing signal. The android had long ago discovered an affinity with communications equipment.

“Hello.”

“Alice? This is Modular Man.”

A slight pause. “Not funny.”

“This really is Modular Man. I’m back.”

“Modular Man blew up!”

“My creator built me over again. I’ve got almost all the memories of the original.” The android’s eyes scanned the street, looking up and down. There were very few people on the street for a warm June afternoon. “You feature in a lot of those memories, Alice.”

“Oh, god.”

There was another long pause. The android noticed that the pedestrians on the street seemed to be giving one another a lot of space. One of them wore a gauze mask over his mouth and nose. Cars were few.

“Can I see you?” he asked.

“You were important for me, you know.”

“I’m glad, Alice.” The android sensed impending disappointment in his demotion to the past tense.

“I mean, every man I’d ever been involved with was so demanding. Wanting this, wanting that. I never had any time to find out what Alice wanted. And then I meet this guy who’s willing to give me all the space I need, who didn’t want anything from me because he can’t want anything, because he’s a machine, you know, and because he can get me seated at the good tables at Aces High and because we can fly and dance with the moon…” There was a brief silence. “You were really important to me, Mod Man. But I can’t see you. I’m married now.”

A palpable sense of loss drifted like scuttering snow across the android’s macroatomic switches. “I’m happy for you, Alice.” A National Guard jeep cruised past, with four Guardsmen in combat gear. Modular Man, who had established good relations with the Guard during the Swarm attack, gave them a wave. The jeep slowed, its passengers looking at him without changing expression. Then they speeded up and moved on.

“I thought you were dead. You know?”

“I understand.” He sensed an irresolution in her. “Can I call you later?”

“Only at work.” Her voice was fast. “If you call me at home, Ralph might start asking questions. He knows about a lot of my past, but he might find an affair with a machine a little weird. I mean, I know it was okay, and you know, but I imagine it’s a little strange explaining it to people.”

“I understand.”

“He’s tolerant of alternate lifestyles, but I’m not sure how tolerant he’d be of me having one. Particularly one he’d never heard of or thought about.”

“I’ll call you, Alice.”

“Good-bye.”

She thought I didn’t want anything for myself, the android thought as he hung up the phone. Somehow that made him sadder than anything.

His finger jabbed the coin slot again and dialed a California number. The phone rang twice before a recording announced the number had been disconnected. Cyndi had moved somewhere. Maybe, he thought, he’d call her agent later.

He dialed a New Haven number. “Hi, Kate,” he said.

“Oh.” He heard someone inhaling a cigarette. When the voice came back, it was cheerful. “I always thought someone would put you back together.”

Relief poured into him. “Someone did. For good this time, I hope.”

A low chuckle. “It’s hard to keep a good man down.”

The android thought about that for a moment. “Maybe I can see you,” he said.

“I’m not coming to Manhattan. The bridges are closed anyway.”

“Bridges closed?”

“Bridges closed. Martial law. Panic in the streets. You have been out of touch, haven’t you?”

Modular Man looked up and down the street again. “I guess so.”

“There’s a wild card outbreak, mostly in lower Manhattan. Hundreds of people have drawn the Black Queen. It’s a mutant form. Supposedly it’s spread by a carrier named Croyd Crenson.”

“The Sleeper? I’ve heard the name.”

Kate sucked on the cigarette again. “They’ve closed the bridges and tunnels to keep him from getting out. There’s martial law.”

Which explained the Guard on the streets again. “Things had seemed a little slow,” Modular Man said. “But nobody told me.”

“Amazing.”

“I guess if you’re dead”—hollowly—“you don’t get to watch the news.” He thought about this for a moment, then tried to cheer himself up. “I could visit you. I can fly. Roadblocks can’t stop me.”

“You might—” She cleared her throat. “You might be a carrier, Mod Man.” She tried to laugh. “Becoming a joker would really wreck my burgeoning academic career.”

“I can’t be a carrier. I’m a machine.”

“Oh.” A surprised pause. “Sometimes I forget.”

“Shall I come?”

“Um…” That cigarette sound again. “I’d better not. Not till after comps.”

“Comps?”

“Three days locked in a very small and cramped hell with the dullest of the Roman poets, which come to think of it is really saying something. I’m studying like mad. I really can’t afford a social life till after I get my degree.”

“Oh. I’ll call you then, okay?”

“I’ll be looking forward.”

“Bye.”

Modular Man hung up the phone. Other phone numbers rolled through his mind; but the first three had been sufficiently discouraging that he didn’t really want to try again.

He looked up the near-vacant street. He could go to Aces High and maybe meet somebody, he thought.

Aces High. Where he’d died.

A coldness touched his mind at the thought. Quite suddenly he didn’t want to go to Aces High at all.

Then he decided he needed to know.

Radar dish spinning, he rose silently into the air.

The android landed on the observation deck and stepped into the bar. Hiram Worchester, standing alone in the middle of the room, swung around suddenly, holding up a fist.… His eyes were dark holes in his doughy face. He looked at Modular Man for a long moment as if he didn’t recognize him, then swallowed hard, lowered his hand, and almost visibly drew a smile onto his face.

“I thought you’d be rebuilt,” he said.

The android smiled. “Takes a licking,” he said. “Keeps on ticking.”

“That’s very good to hear.” Hiram gave a grating chuckle that sounded as if it were coming from the tin horn of a gramophone. “Still, it’s not every day a regular customer comes back from the dead. Your drinks and your next meal, Modular Man, are on Aces High.”

Aside from Hiram the place was nearly deserted: only Wall Walker and two others were present.

“Thank you, Hiram.” The android stepped to the bar and put his foot on the rail. The gesture felt familiar, warmly pleasant and homelike. He smiled at the bartender, whom he hadn’t seen before, and said, “Zombie.” Behind him, Hiram made a choking sound. He turned back to the fat man.

“A problem, Hiram?”

Hiram gave a nervous smile. “Not at all.” He adjusted his bow tie, wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead. His pleasant tone was forced. It sounded as if it took great effort to talk. “I kept parts of you here for months,” he said. “Your head came through more or less intact, though it wouldn’t talk. I kept hoping your creator would appear and know how to reassemble them.”

“He’s secretive and wouldn’t appear in public. But I’m sure he’d like the parts back.”

Hiram looked at him with his deep, dead eyes. “Sorry. Someone stole them. A souvenir freak, I imagine.”

“Oh. My creator will be disappointed.”

“Your zombie, sir,” said the bartender.

“Thank you.” The android noticed that an autographed picture of Senator Hartmann had been moved from a corner of the bar to a prominent place above the bar.

“You must pardon me, Modular Man,” Hiram said, “but I really ought to get back to the kitchens. Time and rognons sautés au champagne wait for no man.”

“Sounds delectable,” said the android. “Perhaps I’ll have your rognons for dinner. Whatever they are.” He watched as Hiram maneuvered his bulk toward the kitchen. There was something wrong with Hiram, he thought, something off-key in the way he reacted to things. The word zombie, the weird comment about the head. He seemed hollow, somehow. As if something was consuming his vast body from the inside. He was completely different from the way Modular Man remembered him.

So was Travnicek. So was everyone.

A chill eddied through his mind. Perhaps his earlier perceptions had been faulty in some way, his recorded memories subject to some unintended cybernetic bias. But it was just as likely that it was his current perceptions that were at fault. Maybe Travnicek’s work was faulty.

Maybe he’d blow up again.

He left the bar and walked toward Wall Walker. Wall Walker was a fixture at Aces High, a thirtyish black man of no apparent occupation whose wild card enabled him to walk on the walls and ceiling. He wore a cloth domino mask that didn’t go very far toward concealing his appearance, seemed to have plenty of money, and was, the android gathered, pleasant company. No one knew his real name. He looked up and smiled.

“Hi, Mod Man. You’re looking good.”

“May I join you?”

“I’m waiting for someone.” His voice had what Modular Man thought to be a light West Indian accent. “But I don’t mind company in the meantime.”

Modular Man sat. Wall Walker regarded him from over the rim of a Sierra Porter. “I haven’t seen you since you … exploded.” He shook his head. “What a mess, mon.”

Modular Man sipped his zombie. Taste receptors made a cataclysmic null sound in his mind. “I was wondering if you might be able to tell me about what happened that night.”

The android’s radar painted him the unmistakable image of Hiram stepping into the bar, glancing left and right in what seemed to be an anxious way, then stepping away.

“Oh. Yes. I daresay you would not remember, would you?” He frowned. “It was an accident, I think. You were trying to rescue Jane from the Astronomer, and you got in Croyd’s way.”

“Croyd? The same Croyd that’s…”

“Spreading the virus? Yes. Same gentleman. He had the power to … make metal go limp, or some other such nonsense. He was trying to use it on the Astronomer and he couldn’t control it and he hit you. You melted like the India-rubber man, and you started firing off tear gas and smoke, mon, and a few seconds later you exploded.”

Modular Man was still for a few seconds while his circuits explored this possibility. “The Astronomer was made of metal?” he asked.

“No. Just an old fella, kinda frail.”

“So Croyd’s power wouldn’t have worked anyway. Not on the Astronomer.”

Wall Walker raised his hands. “People were shootin’ off everything they had, mon. We had a full-grown elephant in here. The lights were out, the place was full of tear gas…”

“And Croyd fired off a wild card talent that could only work against me.”

Wall Walker shrugged. The two other customers rose and left the bar. Modular Man thought for a moment.

“Who’s Jane? The woman I was trying to rescue.”

Wall Walker looked at him. “You don’t remember her, either?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You were supposed to be guarding her. They call her Water Lily, mon.”

“Oh.” A qualified relief entered the android’s mind. Here, at least, was something he could remember. “I met her briefly. During the Great Cloisters Raid. I thought her name was actually Lily, though.” Didn’t I see you at the ape-escape? he’d asked. Never saw her again. Maybe she’d have some answers.

“Seems to prefer that people call her Jane, mon. Was the name she used when she worked here.”

I don’t have a name, the android thought suddenly. I’ve got this label, Modular Man, but it’s a trademark, not a real name, not Bob or Simon or Michael. Sometimes people call me Mod Man, but that’s just to make it easy on themselves. I don’t really have a name.

Sadness wafted through his mind.

“Do you know how to get ahold of this Jane person?” he asked. “I’d like to ask her some questions.”

Wall Walker chuckled. “You and half the city, mon. She has disappeared and is probably running for her life. Word is she can heal Croyd’s victims.”

“Yes?”

“By fucking them.”

“Oh.”

Facts whirled hopelessly in the eddies of the android’s mind. None of this made any sense at all. Croyd had blown him up and was now spreading death throughout the city; the woman who could heal the harm Croyd was doing had fled from sight; Hiram and Travnicek were behaving oddly; and Alice had got married.

The android looked at Wall Walker carefully. “If this is all part of some strange joke,” he said, “tell me now. Otherwise”—quite seriously—“I’ll hurt you badly.”

Wall Walker’s eyes dilated. The android had the feeling he was not terribly intimidated. “I am not making it up, mon.” His voice was emphatic, matter-of-fact. “This is not a fantasy, Mod Man. Croyd is spreading the Black Queen, Water Lily is on the run, there’s martial law.”

Suddenly there was shouting from the kitchen.

“I don’t know where he went, damn it!” Hiram’s voice. “He just walked out!”

“He was looking for you!” There was a sudden crash, as if a stack of pans had just toppled.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! He just walked out, goddammit!”

“He wouldn’t walk out on me!”

“He walked out on both of us!”

“Jane wouldn’t walk out!”

“They both left us!”

“I don’t believe you!” More pans crashed.

“Out! Out! Get out of my place!” Hiram’s voice was a scream. Suddenly he appeared, rushing out of the kitchen with another man in his arms. The man was Asian and wore a chef’s uniform. He seemed light as a feather.

Hiram flung the man into the outside door. He didn’t have enough weight to swing it open and began to drift to the floor. Hiram flushed. He rushed forward and pushed the man through the door.

There was a silence in the restaurant, filled only by the sound of Hiram’s winded breaths. The restauranteur gave the bar a defiant glare, then stalked into his office. One of the customers rose hastily to pay for his drink and leave.

“Goddamn,” the other customer said. He was a lanky, brown-haired man who looked uncomfortable in his well-tailored clothes. “I spent twenty years trying to get into this place, and look what happens when I finally get here.”

Modular Man looked at Wall Walker. The black man gave him a rueful smile and said, “Standards fallin’ all over.”

The android took an odd comfort from the scene. Hiram was different. It wasn’t just some programming glitch.

He turned his mind back to Wild Card Day. Circuits sifted possibilities. “Could Croyd have been working for the Astronomer?”

“Back on Wild Card Day?” Wall Walker seemed to find this thought interesting. “He is a mercenary of sorts—it’s possible. But the Astronomer killed just about all of his own henchmen—a real bloodbath, mon—and Croyd is still with us.”

“How do you know so much about Croyd?”

A smile. “I keep my ear to the ground, mon.”

“What’s he look like?” Modular Man intended to avoid him.

“I cannot give a description of what he looks like right now. Fella keeps changing appearance and abilities, understand, mon—his wild card. And last time he surfaced he had someone with him, a bodyguard or something, and no one knows which is which. Or who. One of them, Croyd or the other guy, he’s an albino, mon. Probably got his hair dyed and shades over his eyes by now. The other is young, good-looking. But neither have been seen for a few days—no new cases of wild card—so whichever one is Croyd, he may be someone else now. He may not be carrying the plague anymore.”

“In that case the emergency’s over, right?”

“Guess so. There is still the gang war going on, though.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“And the elections. Even I don’t believe who’s running.”

Seen on radar, Hiram appeared from his office, cast another anxious glance over the barroom, left again. Wall Walker’s eyes tracked him over Modular Man’s right shoulder. He looked concerned.

“Hiram’s not doing well.”

“I thought he seemed different.”

“Business is way off, mon. Aces are not as fashionable as once we were. The Wild Card Day massacres were a real black eye for all wild talents. And then there was violence all over the bloody place on the WHO tour, a real cock-up, and Hiram took part … beg pardon, mon, that’s something else you probably don’t know about.”

“Never mind,” said the android.

“Okay. And now, the Croyd buggering up and dealing jokers and Black Queens all over town, a big reaction is going on. Soon it may not be … politically astute … to be seen in aces’ company.”

“I’m not an ace. I’m a machine.”

“You fly, mon! You are abnormally strong, and you shoot energy bolts. Try and tell someone the difference.”

“I suppose.”

Someone walked into the bar. The radar image was strange enough that Modular Man turned his head to pick up on him visually.

The man’s brown hair and beard hung almost to his ankles. He had a crucifix on a chain around his neck, outside the hair, and otherwise wore a dirty T-shirt, blue jean cutoffs, and was barefoot.

None of this was sufficiently abnormal to do more than suggest a wild card, but as the man ambled closer, Modular Man saw the different-colored irises, orange-yellow-green, set one within the other like target symbols. His hands were deformed, the fingers thin and hairy. He held a six-ounce bottle of Coke in one hand.

“This is the man I need to see,” Wall Walker said. “If you’ll pardon me.”

“See you later maybe.” Modular Man stood up.

The hairy stranger walked up to the table and looked at Wall Walker and said, “I know you.”

“You know me, Flattop.”

Modular Man made his way to the bar and ordered another zombie. Hiram appeared and ejected Flattop for lacking proper footwear. When he left with Wall Walker, the android noticed that he had plugged the Coke bottle into the inside of his elbow joint, as if the bottle were a hypodermic needle, and left it there.

The bar was empty. Hiram seemed fretful and depressed, and the bartender echoed his boss’s mood. The android made excuses and left.

He wouldn’t drink zombies ever again. The associations were just too depressing.

“Yah. Gotta get us some money, right, food processor?” Maxim Travnicek was rooting through a pile of notes he’d written to himself during Modular Man’s assemblage. “I want you to get to the patent office tomorrow. Get some forms. Shit, my foot itches.” He rubbed the toe of his left shoe against his right calf.

“I could try to get on Peregrine’s Perch tomorrow. Let everyone know I’m back. She only pays scale, but…”

“The bitch is pregnant, you know. Gonna pop any day now, from what I can see.”

Something else I hadn’t heard about, the android thought. Wonderful. Next he would discover that France had changed its name to Fredonia and moved to Asia.

“But you should see her tits! If you thought they were good before, you should see them now! Fantastic!”

“I’ll fly over and visit her producer.”

“Bosonic strings,” Travnicek said. He had one of his notes in his hand but didn’t seem to be looking at it. “Minus one to the Nth is minus one for the massless vector, so epsilon equals one.” His eyes had glazed over. His body swayed back and forth. He seemed to have fallen into some kind of trance. “For superstrings,” he went on, “minus one to the Nth is plus one for the massless vector, so epsilon equals minus one … All of the n times n antihermitian matrices taken together represent U(n) in the complex case … Potential clash with unitarity…”

Cold terror washed over the android. He had never seen his creator do this before.

Travnicek went on in this mode for several minutes. Then he seemed to jerk awake. He turned to Modular Man.

“Did I say something?” he asked.

The android repeated it word for word. Travnicek listened with a frown. “That’s open strings, okay,” he said. “It’s the ghost string operator that’s the bitch. Did I say anything about Sigma sub plus one over two?”

“Sorry,” said the android.

“Damn it.” Travnicek shook his head. “I’m a physicist, not a mathematician. I’ve been working too hard. And my fucking foot keeps itching.” He hopped to his camp bed, sat down, took off his shoe and sock. He began scratching between his toes.

“If I could get a handle on the fucking fermion-emission vertex I could solve that power-drain problem you have when you rotate out of the normal spectrum. Massless particles are easy, it’s the…”

He stopped talking and stared at his foot.

Two of his toes had come off in his hand. Bluish ooze dripped deliberately from the wounds.

The android stared in disbelief.

Travnicek began to scream.

“The operators in question,” said Travnicek, “are fermionic only in a two-dimensional world-sheet sense and not in the space-time D-dimensional sense.” Lying on a gurney in the Rensselaer Clinic E-room, Travnicek had lapsed into a trance again. Modular Man wondered if this had anything to do with the “ghost operator” his creator had mentioned earlier.

“Truncating the spectrum to an even G parity sector … eliminates the tachyon from the spectrum…”

“It’s wild card,” Dr. Finn said to Modular Man. There had scarcely been any doubt. “But it’s strange. I don’t understand the spectra.” He glanced at a series of computer printouts. His hooves clicked nervously on the floor. “There seem to be two strains of wild card.”

“Ghost-free light-cone gauge … Lorentz invariance is valid…”

“I’ve informed Tachyon,” said Finn. He was a pony-size centaur, his human half wearing a white lab coat and stethoscope. He looked at Travnicek, then at the android. “Can you assume responsibility for this man, should we decide to give him the serum? Are you family?”

“I can’t sign legal documents. I’m not a person, I’m a sixth-generation machine intelligence.”

Finn absorbed this. “We’ll wait for Tachyon,” he decided.

The plastic curtains parted. The alien’s violet eyes widened in surprise. “You’re back,” he said. Modular Man realized this was the first time he’d ever heard Tachyon use a contraction.

Tachyon was dressed in a white lab coat over which he wore a hussar jacket with enough gold lace to outfit the Ruritanian Royal Guard. Over it was strapped a Colt Python on a black gunbelt with silver-and-turquoise conchos. “You’re carrying a six-gun,” Modular Man said.

Tachyon recovered quickly from his surprise. He waved his hand carelessly. “There has been … harassment. We are coping, however, I am pleased to see you have been reassembled.”

“Thank you. I’ve brought in a patient.”

Tachyon took the printouts from the centaur and began glancing through them. “This is the first appearance of the wild card in three days,” he remarked. “If we can discover where the patient was infected, we might be able to trace Croyd.”

“Reparametrization invariance of the bosonic string!” Travnicek shouted. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Preserve the covariant gauge!”

Tachyon’s eyes narrowed as he glanced at the printouts. “There are two strains of wild card,” Tachyon said. “One old infection, one new.”

Modular Man looked at Travnicek in surprise. Probabilities poured through his mind. Travnicek had been a wild card all along. His ability to build Modular Man had been a function of his talent, not native genius.

Tachyon looked at Travnicek. “Can he be awakened from this state?”

“I don’t know.”

Tachyon leaned over the gurney, looked at Travnicek intently. Mental powers, Modular Man thought.

Travnicek gave a shout and batted the alien’s arms away. He sat up and stared.

“It’s that fucking Lorelei!” he said. “She’s doing this to me, the bitch. Just because I wouldn’t tip.”

Tachyon looked at him. “Mister, ah…”

Travnicek brandished a finger. “Stop singing when we do it, I said, and maybe I’ll tip! Who needs that kind of distraction?”

“Sir,” Tachyon said. “We need a list of your contacts over the last few days.”

Sweat poured down Travnicek’s face. “I haven’t seen anyone. I’ve been in the loft the last three days. Only ate a few slices of pizza from the fridge.” His voice rose to a shriek. “It’s that Lorelei, I tell you! She’s doing it!”

“Are you sure this Lorelei is your only contact?”

“Jesus, yes!” Travnicek held out his hand. His two toes were still in his palm. “Look what the bitch is doing to me!”

“Do you know how to reach her? Where she might be hiding?”

“Shangri-la Outcalls. They’re in the book. Just have them send her.” Rage entered his eyes. “Five bucks for the taxi!”

Finn looked at Tachyon. “Could Croyd have become a female in the last three days?”

“Unlikely, but this remains the only lead we possess. If nothing else, this Lorelei might provide us with a lead to Croyd. Call the Squad. And the police.”

“Sir.” Finn’s hooves rapped daintily on the tile floor as he left the curtained area. Tachyon’s attention returned to Travnicek.

“Have you a wild card history?” he asked. “Any manifestations?”

“Of course not.” Travnicek reached for his bare foot, then jerked his hand back. “I have no feeling in my toes. Goddamn it!”

“The reason I asked, sir—this is your second dose of wild card. You have a previous infection.”

Travnicek’s head snapped up. Sweat sprayed over Tachyon’s coat. “What the hell do you mean, previous infection? I’ve had nothing of the sort.”

“It would appear that you have. Your gene structure has been thoroughly infiltrated by the virus.”

“I’ve never been sick in my life, you fucking quack.”

“Sir,” the android interrupted. “You have unusual abilities. Involving … reparametrization invariance of the bosonic string?”

Travnicek looked at him for a long moment. Then comprehension dawned, followed by horror.

“My God,” he said.

“Sir,” said Tachyon. “There is a serum. It has a twenty percent chance of success.”

Travnicek continued to stare at the android. “Success,” he said. “That means both infections go, right?”

“Yes. If it works at all. But there is a risk…”

Hooves tapped on the floor. Finn appeared through the curtains. “All set, Doc.” He carried a case, which he opened. Bottles and hypodermics were revealed. “I’ve brought the serum. Also the release forms.”

Travnicek appeared to notice the centaur for the first time. He shrank away. “Get away from me, you freak!”

Finn seemed embarrassed. Tachyon’s face hardened, and he drew himself up. Angry hauteur burned in his face. “Dr. Finn is in charge here. He is a licensed physician—”

“I don’t care if he’s licensed to pull carriages in Central Park! A joker is doing this to me, and I’m not having a joker treat me!” Travnicek hesitated and looked at the toes in his hand. Decision entered his eyes. He flung the toes to the ground. “In fact, I’m not taking the fucking serum at all.” He looked at the android. “Get me out of here. Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Dismay wafted through the android. He was not constructed so as to be able to refuse a direct command from his creator. He picked up Travnicek in his arms and rose into the air. Tachyon watched, arms folded in frozen, implacable hostility.

“Wait!” Finn’s tone was desperate. “We need you to sign a release that you refused treatment!”

“Piss off!” barked Travnicek. Modular Man floated above the screens separating the E-room beds and began moving toward the entrance. A gray-faced joker child, waiting to have a splinter removed from his knee, stared upward with blank silver eyeballs. Finn followed, waving his forms and a pencil.

“Sir! I at least need your name!”

Modular Man butted through the swinging doors leading to the E-room and then past a surprised, green, seven-foot joker to the street door. Once outside he accelerated.

“After we get home,” Travnicek said, “I want you to find Lorelei. Bring her to the loft and we’ll make her turn off her wild card.”

People on the night streets stared up as the android and his burden flew overhead. Half of them were wearing gauze masks. Modular Man’s feeling of dismay intensified. “This is a viral infection, sir,” he said. “I don’t believe anyone is doing this to you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Travnicek slapped his forehead. “The two sons of bitches in the hallway! I forgot about them!” He grinned. “It’s not the chippie after all. When I went downstairs to call Lorelei on the pay phone in the downstairs hall, I ran into these two guys coming up the stairs. I bumped into one of them in the hall. They went into the apartment right under us. One of them must be this Croyd guy.”

“Was one an albino?”

“I didn’t pay attention to them. They were wearing those surgical mask things anyway.” He grew excited. “One of them was wearing dark glasses! And in a dark corridor! He must have been hiding his pink eyes!”

They had arrived at Travnicek’s building. The android flew down the alley, circled into the airshaft, and rose to the building’s flat roof. He opened the skylight and lowered Travnicek carefully through it. As he set Travnicek on his feet, he observed that two of the man’s remaining toes were set at an odd angle.

Travnicek, oblivious to this fact, cackled as he paced back and forth. “I thought there was a joker in that apartment,” he said. “I ran into one once on the stairs. All I cared about was that he didn’t complain to the landlord about noise from the flux generators.” One of his toes, cast adrift, rolled under a table. “He’s right below,” he said. “He’s been doing this to me, and now the bastard is going to pay.”

“He may not be able to control it,” the android said. He was looking at the place where the toe had vanished, wondering if he should retrieve it. “He may not be able to reverse things.”

Travnicek swung around. Sweat was pouring down his face. His eyes were fevered. “He’s going to stop what he’s doing,” he shouted, “or he’s going to die!” His voice rose to a shriek. “I am not going to be a joker! I am a genius, and I intend to stay one! Find the bastard and bring him here!”

“Yes, sir.” Resigned, the android stepped to the metal locker where his spare parts were kept. He twirled the combination knob, opened the door, and saw that the two grenade launchers were missing. Apparently he’d loaded one with sleep gas and the other with smoke grenades, and they’d been destroyed at Aces High. That left the dazzler, the 20mm cannon, and the microwave laser.

Croyd, he thought, had already destroyed him once.

He opened the zips on the shoulders of his jumpsuit and willed open the slots on his shoulders. He took the cannon and the laser and fixed them in place. The cannon was almost as tall as he was and heavy; he wove software patterns that compensated his balance accordingly. A drum of 20mm rounds was attached to the cannon. The bolt slammed back and forward and the first round was chambered.

He wondered if he was going to die again.

He turned on his flux fields. Ozone crackled around him. A faint St. Elmo’s aura danced before his eyes.

Insubstantial, he melted through the floor.

The first thing the android saw was a television set. Its tube had imploded. An unstrung coat hanger was wired in place of one of the broken rabbit ears.

There was a camp bed in the middle of the floor. The mattress was wrapped in plastic. There were no sheets. Cheap furniture choked the rest of the room.

The android became substantial and hung suspended in the middle of the room. He heard voices in the back room. His weaponry swung toward the sound and locked into position.

“Something broke all the glass.” The voice was fast, fervid, weirdly intense. “Something strange is going on.”

“Maybe a sonic boom.” Another voice, deeper. Certainly calmer.

“The cups on the shelves?” The voice was very insistent, talking so fast the words crowded on one another. “Something broke the cups on the shelves. Sonic booms don’t do that. Not in New York. Something else must’ve done that.” The man wouldn’t let the subject alone.

Modular Man hovered to the doorway. Two men stood in the apartment’s tiny kitchen, bent to peer into a small refrigerator. Milk and orange juice dripped from its sill.

The nearest man was young, dark-haired, movie-star handsome. He was dressed in blue jeans and a Levi’s jacket. He had a piece of a broken juice container in his hand.

The other was a thin, pale, nervous man with pink eyes.

“Which one of you is Croyd Crenson?” asked the android.

The pink-eyed man turned and gave a shriek. “You blew up!” he shouted, and in a blur of speed he reached for a gun under his Levi’s jacket.

Modular Man concluded this sure enough sounded like a guilty conscience. The ceiling was too low for him to maneuver over the first man, so he pushed out with an arm as he moved forward, intending to knock him into the refrigerator and get next to the albino.

The second man didn’t move when the android shoved him. He didn’t even shift his stance, partly stooped by the refrigerator. Modular Man stopped dead. He pushed harder. The man straightened and smiled and didn’t move.

The presumed Croyd fired his automatic. The sound thundered in the small room. The first wild round missed, the second gouged plastic skin from the android’s shoulder, the third and fourth shots hit Croyd’s companion.

The man still didn’t react, not even after being shot. The bullets didn’t ricochet or flatten on impact, just dropped to the scarred linoleum.

Bullets don’t work, the android thought. Scratch the cannon.

Modular Man backed up, dropped to the floor, fired a straight punch to the young man’s chest. The man still didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. Croyd’s bullets cracked as they cut the air. A couple of them hit his friend, none hit the android. The android punched again, full force. Same result.

The young man struck out, the return punch unnaturally fast. His fist caught Modular Man and knocked him back, out of the kitchen. The android drove through the old tin paneling of the far wall and partway through the slats on the other side. Paint flecks a dozen layers thick dropped like gray snow from the ancient walls. Red damage lights came alive in the android’s mind.

Modular Man levered himself out of the wall—the long tube of the cannon got caught and required a wrench of the android’s shoulders to free it. He saw the albino charging with superhuman speed, the refrigerator raised high. The android tried to get out of the way, but the wall hampered him and Croyd was moving very fast. The refrigerator drove Modular Man back through the wall again, widening the hole. Orange juice sloshed in the refrigerator’s interior.

Modular Man cut in his flight generators and flew straight forward, seizing the refrigerator and using it as a battering ram. Croyd was caught off center and spun into the front room, arms flailing, before the camp bed caught the back of his knees and he crashed to the floor. The android kept going, driving the refrigerator full force into Croyd’s companion.

The man still didn’t move. St. Elmo’s fire filled the hallway as the android’s generators went to full power. The man still didn’t move.

The hell with it. Go for Croyd.

The android let go of the refrigerator and altered his flight pattern to head for the albino, Very quickly, before he could move more than a few inches, the young man struck out with the other arm, a forearm slam against the top of the refrigerator.

Modular Man went through the wall again, across someone’s apartment, into a fifteen-gallon fish tank, then into the exterior wall. Bits of the android’s consciousness fragmented with shock. A green flood poured across the carpet. Tropical fish began to die.

A moment of time throbbed endlessly in his mind. He could not remember his purpose, could not recognize the scatter of bright scales that flapped helplessly before his gaze. Automatic systems slowly rerouted his memory.

The day and its long advent of despair returned. He pried himself from the wall. His energies needed replenishment. He couldn’t go insubstantial for a while, and he shouldn’t fly. The 20mm cannon hung bent over one shoulder. The laser seemed intact.

The apartment was decorated with care, featuring abstract prints, an Oriental carpet, more fish tanks. A mobile jangled near the ceiling. Its tenant seemed not to be home. Distantly he heard the sound of arriving police. The android stepped through the hole into Croyd’s apartment, saw that the albino and his companion had left, and walked up the stairs to Travnicek’s. On the way his consciousness disappeared twice, for half-second intervals. When he regained it, he moved faster.

He heard the heavy footsteps of police below.

Travnicek opened the door to his knock. Both his feet were bare, and all the toes had gone. Something blue and hairy was beginning to grow from each wound.

“Fucking coffee maker,” said Travnicek.

The android knew it wasn’t going to get any better.

“Croyd wasn’t so much a problem as this other person.” The android had his jumpsuit off, was repairing the gouge in his synthetic flesh. The cannon lay on a table. He would have to get a replacement from the army munitions depot where he’d found the first one.

Travnicek was laboring over broken components. He’d told the police that he’d heard shots but had been afraid to go downstairs to phone for help. They’d accepted his explanation without comment and never came into the apartment where the android had been hiding in a locker.

“Nothing’s really badly damaged, toaster,” Travnicek said. “Field monitor jarred loose. That’s why you kept losing consciousness. I’ll strap the bastard down this time. Otherwise, just a few dings here and there.”

He straightened. His eyes glazed over. “Renormalization function switch damaged,” he said. “Replace at once.” He shook his head, frowned a moment, then turned to the android. “Open your chest again. I just remembered something.”

Travnicek was scratching one of his hands near the finger joints. He looked down, realized what he was doing, and stopped. He seemed a little pale.

“After I get you fixed up,” he said, “get on the goddamn streets. That Croyd guy is gonna be using his power to transform more people. That’ll give you a fix on his location. I want you to be looking for him.”

“Yes, sir.” The android’s chest opened. He noticed that his creator’s neck was beginning to swell, and that his flesh now had a distinct blue cast.

He decided not to mention it.

The android patrolled all that night, searching the streets for familiar figures. His internal radio receiver was tuned to any alert, on both police and National Guard bands. From a early edition of the Times stolen from a pile near a closed newsstand, he found out that there had been a half dozen cases of wild card in the two hours following his battle with Croyd. Three of the cases had been in Jokertown, and the other three were people traveling together on a northbound number 4 Lexington Avenue express. Croyd and his companion had taken the subway at least as far as the Forty-second Street stop.

He also discovered from a copy of Newsweek he found in a trash basket that Croyd and his unknown protector had fought a group of jokers led by Tachyon to a standstill a few days before.

He wished he’d known that. Even though the article didn’t give many details, maybe knowing the pair was dangerous would have made a difference.

As he hovered over the streets, eyes and radar casting for familiar images, he replayed the fight in the apartment. He’d tried to knock the unknown man away, and the man hadn’t moved. Punches had struck him and then stopped. When the android had tried to bulldoze him with the refrigerator, motion had just stopped. Bullets hadn’t bounced off the man, just lost their energy and fallen to the floor.

Lost their energy, the android thought. Lost their energy and died.

The unknown man, therefore, absorbed kinetic energy. Then he transformed it in an attack of his own. He had to get hit first, the android realized, because he seemed to need to absorb the android’s attack before he could strike back.

Satisfaction moved through the android’s mind. All he had to do to get around the other guy was not hit him. If he didn’t have any energy to absorb, he couldn’t do anything.

And if things went wrong, the android could use the microwave laser as a last resort. The unknown man absorbed kinetic energy, not radiation.

The android smiled. He had the next encounter aced.

All he had to do was find them.

At two thirty-one in the afternoon two people drew the Black Queen on Forty-seventh Street near Hammarskjöld Plaza. The radio crackled with NYPD and National Guard commands to reinforce the guards on the United Nations building in case Croyd was intending to make some move on the UN.

Modular Man was overhead seconds after the alarm. Two victims were stretched on the street half a block apart, one lying still, his body turned into something monstrous, the other writhing in pain as his bones dissolved and he was crushed by the weight of his own body. Olive-green M.A.S.H. ambulances were responding, followed in the distance by a whooping city ambulance. There was nothing Modular Man could do for the victims. He flew a swift search pattern over the block, then began flying in widening circles. Another wild card victim to the west of the others on Third Avenue gave his search another focal point.

Then he saw one of his targets, Croyd’s brown-haired companion. The man was dressed as the android had last seen him, in a Levi’s jacket and jeans. He was walking east on Forty-eighth Street, having doubled back, and he was moving quickly, hands in his pockets and eyes fixed on the pedestrians ahead of him.

Modular Man flew behind the parapet of a building across the street, paralleling him, moving his head from cover every so often to keep tabs on his target. There was very little foot traffic and the android found him easy to follow. The young man did not look up. Ambulance sirens wailed in the distance.

The young man began moving north on Second Avenue. He walked for three blocks, then pushed through the revolving door of a large white-stone bank.

The android hovered over the building across the street while he decided what to do, then flew swiftly across Second Avenue and dropped to the pavement, careful not to make his movements visible from the bank’s front door. People in white gauze masks gave him plenty of room on the sidewalk.

The android turned insubstantial and walked into the thick wall of the bank, then pushed his face through the far side. Croyd’s guardian had walked across the bank lobby, past the teller cages, and was speaking to a pudgy, white-haired bank guard who sat on a stool near one of the back doors. He showed the guard a card and a key. The guard nodded, pressed a button, and a sliding door opened. The young man entered an elevator and the door shut behind him.

Modular Man stepped back from the building. Apparently Croyd’s companion was heading for a safety deposit box. The android, to the audible gasps of a pair of pedestrians, dropped through the pavement.

Though his vision was dark, his internal navigation systems kept him aligned perfectly. He moved down, then forward. His upper head, containing eyes and radar, moved tentatively through a wall: the android perceived an enormous vault with a clerk behind a desk, her back to him. Stacks of fresh bills, each with a neat paper wrapper, stood on the desk.

Wrong vault. The android moved back, then to the side, then forward again, then pushed through a row of safety deposit boxes.

Right vault. Remaining insubstantial was draining his power reserves: he couldn’t do this much longer.

Croyd’s companion was marching with another guard to one large box. He and the guard inserted their keys, and the young man withdrew the box. The android memorized its location, then made note of the position of all the cameras and other security monitors.

His energy was running low. He moved back, rose up through the sidewalk, turned substantial, flew to the roof across the street, and lighted. It probably didn’t matter what was in the deposit box, although if it proved relevant, he could always return.

Croyd’s companion was in the bank for another ten minutes, allowing the android’s energy to return fully. When the man emerged, he began retracing his steps south, turning west on Fiftieth Street to avoid the ambulances and military police setting up checkpoints on Forty-seventh, then hastened to Lexington Avenue, where he turned south again. The android followed, flitting from roof to roof. His quarry walked south to Forty-fourth, then headed west to enter one of the side entrances to Grand Central Station.

The android turned insubstantial and flew through the wall onto the second level of the station. He lighted on the polished marble balcony and watched his quarry move across the floor below.

The station was almost deserted. The entrances to the platforms were guarded by regular army Rangers in black berets. They were in full biological warfare rig, hoods and gas masks off but ready. Croyd’s companion walked to a stairway leading down to the arcade level and descended.

The android followed, moving carefully, turning insubstantial when necessary in order to peer around corners. The young man moved lower, through a utility door with a smashed lock, then down into the train tunnels that stretched north from the station. Rusting iron supports held up what seemed to be half of Manhattan. Occasional bulbs provided dim light. The place smelled of damp and metal. The android, keeping his target in sight with radar, followed without difficulty.

He found a corpse, a man in several layers of shabby clothing whose body seemed to have calcified, leaving the derelict a huddled figure with his face permanently carved in a look of horror and pain. Croyd had been here all right. There was another body a hundred yards farther on, an elderly woman with her bags clutched around her. The android looked closer.

It wasn’t the bag lady he had once known. The android was relieved.

“D’ja get it? D’ja get it?” The albino’s eager voice rapped out of the darkness.

“Yeah.”

“Lemme see.”

“Bunch of keys. Envelope of cash.”

“Gimme the deposit key.”

The android crept nearer. An approaching train was rumbling closer, coming from the north.

“Here you go. You shouldn’t have risked going out.”

The albino’s rapid-fire voice crackled with suspicion. “Didn’t know if I could trust you. And your signature wasn’t on the card.”

“The guard barely looked at it. I think he was drunk.”

“Gimme the gun.”

“This thing’s heavy. What is it?”

“Forty-four Automag. The most powerful handgun ever made.” Croyd strapped a giant shoulder holster under his arm. “If the robot comes after us again,” he said, “I wanna be able to dent him. This thing fires cut-down NATO rifle rounds.”

“Jesus.”

The albino said something then, but Modular Man couldn’t hear it. The train was getting closer. Its headlight outlined iron stanchions. Croyd and his companion began moving toward Modular Man. The android silently flew upward to the dirty ceiling, hovering in the shadow of a girder.

Yellow light burned steadily on the iron pillars as the train ground steadily southward. The noise echoed in the cavernous room. Croyd and his bodyguard passed beneath the android.

Croyd looked up, warned somehow—maybe he’d seen the hovering android in his peripheral vision. The albino yelled something obscured by the sound of the train and clawed for his pistol with incredible speed. His companion began to turn.

Modular Man dropped from the ceiling, his arms going around the albino from behind. The train bathed the scene in garish cinema light. Croyd shouted, tried to throw himself from side to side. His strength was considerably more than that of a normal human, but not equal to that of the android. Modular Man rose into the air, his legs wrapping around Croyd’s, and he began to fly south. Wind from the train pushed him on.

“Hey…!” The companion was running after, waving an arm. “Bring him back!” The huge gun, still jammed in Croyd’s armpit, fired out and down through Croyd’s coat. A ricochet struck bright sparks from an iron stanchion.

Croyd’s guardian swerved. He leaped directly into the path of the train.

There was a burst of light, a crackling sound. The train stopped dead. The young man was hurled fifty feet farther down the track. When he hit the ground, a smaller burst of electricity jumped between him and the nearest rail.

The man jumped to his feet. In the bright light of the train’s headlight the android could see his grin.

Modular Man made a brief calculation of the amount of kinetic energy possessed by a fully loaded train moving at fifteen or so miles per hour. Although Croyd’s guardian hadn’t absorbed all of it, and the excess had bled off in a burst of lightning—there were some limits on his power, fortunately—the total of what he had absorbed was appalling. The android’s laser whined as it tracked toward the man standing on the tracks.

The man crouched, bracing his feet against the track, then jumped. His leap was aimed ahead of the android, to cut him off. The man tumbled in air—evidently he wasn’t used to traveling this way—then hit a stanchion and fell to the ground. No electricity this time. He picked himself up and looked at the approaching android with clenched teeth. His clothing smoldered.

Swift calculations passed through macroatomic circuits, followed by lightspeed regret. Modular Man hadn’t ever shot a real person before. He didn’t want to now. But Croyd was killing people even in hiding, even in the tunnels deep under Grand Central. And if Croyd’s guardian got his hands on the android, he could tear his alloy skeleton to bits.

The android fired. Then suddenly he was falling, his arms limp. Croyd tumbled to the ground. The android crashed to the ground at the young man’s feet. The young man reached, seized him by the shoulders. The android tried to move, failed.

Modular Man realized that Croyd’s protector didn’t just absorb kinetic energy. He absorbed any kind of energy and could return it instantly.

Bad mistake, he thought.

Suddenly he was flying again. He crashed through the side of the commuter train, sprawled across several seats in a spill of glass and torn aluminum. Someone’s briefcase tumbled to the aisle, papers flying. The android heard a scream.

His sensors registered the smell of burning.

The few people on board—executives whose work forced them into the quarantined city—rushed to his aid. Lifting him from his ungainly sprawl across the seats, they laid him carefully in the aisle. “What’s that on his head?” asked a white-haired man with a mustache.

Radar imaging was gone. Its control unit had been fried when Croyd’s bodyguard returned the coherent microwave pulse. The monitor that controlled his ability to turn insubstantial was gone. His alloy underskin had a neat hole in it. The excess energy had blown a lot of circuit breakers. The android reset as many as possible and felt control return to his limbs. Some breakers wouldn’t reset.

“Pardon me,” he said, and stood up. People faded back. The train gave a jerk as it started moving again, and the android tumbled backward, arms windmilling, and sat down in the aisle. People rushed toward him again. He felt the helping hands on his right side but not on his left. Balance and coordination were still affected. He rerouted internal circuits, but still something was wrong.

“Excuse me.” He unzipped and pulled off the upper half of his jumpsuit. Train passengers gasped. Plastic flesh was blackened around the wound. Modular Man opened his chest and reached inside with one hand. Someone turned away and began to be sick, but the other passengers seemed interested, one woman standing on a seat and craning her neck to peer into the android’s interior through horn-rimmed spectacles.

The android removed one of his internal guidance units, saw melted connections, and sighed mentally. He returned the unit. The trip home was going to be pretty shaky. He certainly couldn’t fly.

He looked up at the people on the train.

“Do any of you have five dollars for a taxi?” he asked.

The trip to Jokertown was humiliating and dangerous. Some of the passengers supported him out of the station, but even so he fell a few times. With some money given him by the man with the mustache, he took a taxi to the other side of the block from Travnicek’s brownstone. He pushed the money through the slot in the taxi’s bulletproof shield, then staggered out onto the sidewalk. He half-walked, half-crawled down the alley to Travnicek’s building, then dragged himself up the fire escape to the roof. From there he crawled to the skylight and lowered himself down.

Travnicek lay on his camp bed, naked to the waist. His skin was light blue. Writhing cilia, covered with long hairs, grew from where his fingers and toes had been. A fly hummed over his head.

The swollen skin around his neck had split open, revealing a flower lei of organs. Some were recognizable—trumpet-shaped ears, yellowish eyes, some normal in size and some not—but others of the organs were not.

“The only left-moving ghosts,” he muttered, “are the reparametrization ghosts.” His voice was thick, indistinct. The android had the intuition that his lips might be growing together. And the words seemed half-unfamiliar, as if he no longer entirely comprehended their meaning.

“Sir,” said Modular Man. “Sir. I’ve been injured again.”

Travnicek sat up with a start. The eyes clustered around his neck swiveled to focus on the android. “Ah. Toaster. You look … very interesting … this way.” The eyes in his skull were closed. Perhaps, the android thought, forever.

“I need repairs. Croyd’s companion reflected my laser back at me.”

“Why the fuck did you shoot him, blender? All forms of energy are the same. Same as matter, as far as that goes.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Fucking moron. You’d think you’d pick up a little intelligence from me.”

Travnicek jumped up from his cot, moving very fast, faster than a normal human. He caught hold of a roof beam with one hand, swung around it to stand on his head. He planted his feet on the ceiling, the hairy cilia splaying, and then removed his hand from the beam and hung inverted. Yellow eyes looked steadily at the android.

“Not bad, hey? Haven’t felt this good in years.” He moved carefully along the ceiling toward the android.

“Sir. Radar control is burned out. I’ve lost a stabilizer. My flux control is damaged.”

“I hear you.” His voice was serene, drifting. “In fact I don’t just hear you, I perceive you in all sorts of ways. I’m not sure what some of them are just yet.” Travnicek grabbed another roof beam, swung to the floor, dropped. The fly buzzed airily in the distance. Sadness swelled in the android’s analog mind. A mounting hush of fear, like white noise, sizzled steadily in the background of his thoughts.

“Open your chest,” Travnicek said. “Give me the monitor. There’s a spare guidance unit in the cabinet.”

“There’s a hole in my chest.”

The yellow eyes looked at him. The android waited for an outburst.

“Better patch it yourself,” Travnicek said mildly. “When you have the time.” He took the flux monitor and stepped to a workbench. “It’s getting hard to think about all this,” he said.

“Preserve your genius, sir.” Modular Man tried not to let his desperation show. “Fight the infection. I’ll get Croyd here.”

A touch of vinegar entered Travnicek’s voice. “Yah. You do that. Now let me worry about the fermionic coordinates, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Mildly reassured.

He staggered to the locker and began looking for a new gyroscope.

The BARNETT FOR PRESIDENT poster had been defaced. Someone had drawn a knife or fingernail file through the candidate’s picture several times, then written JOKER DEATH over it in thick red letters. Next to it was a freehand drawing of an animal head—a black dog?—executed in thick felt tip.

“Hi. I need to talk.”

Kate blew cigarette smoke. “Okay. For a little while.”

“How are the Roman poets coming along?”

“If Latin weren’t already a dead language, Statius would have killed it.”

Modular Man was hunched over the public phone again. His gyroscope had been replaced and he could walk and fly.

Except for the heavy presence of the National Guard and Army, the streets were nearly deserted. Half the restaurants and cabarets in Jokertown were shut down.

“Kate,” the android said, “I think I’m going to die.”

There was a moment of startled silence. Then, “Tell me.”

“My creator got infected by the wild card. He’s turning into a joker and forgetting how to repair me. And he’s sending me after the plague carrier, hoping the man can make it stop.”

“Okay.” Cautiously. “I’m following.”

“He seems to think the man’s deliberately doing this to him. But most people think the guy is just a carrier, and if that’s true, and I bring him to my creator, the chances are nine to one that if my creator’s reinfected, he’ll draw the Black Queen and die.”

“Yes.”

“And the man I’m after—his name is Croyd—is the man who killed me the first time. And this time Croyd has a protector who is more powerful than he is. We’re already fought twice, and they’ve beaten me both times. The last time I could easily have died. And my creator can’t put me together again. He’s losing his abilities. He may not be able to repair the damage from the last attack.”

Kate drew on her cigarette, exhaled. “Mod Man,” she said, “you need help.”

“Yes. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“I mean other wild cards. You can’t face these two alone.”

“If I went to SCARE or someone, and we captured Croyd together, then I’d have to fight the SCARE aces to get him away. I’d be an outlaw.”

“Maybe you could make some kind of deal with them.”

“I’ll think about it. I’ll try.” Despair wailed through him. “I’m going to die,” he said.

“I’m sorry. Can’t you—just leave?”

“I’m programmed to obey him. I can’t refuse a direct order. And I’m programmed to battle the enemies of society. I don’t have a choice in any of that. People like the Turtle, or Cyclone—it’s their decision to do what they do. It was never mine. I’m not human that way.”

“I see.”

“Sooner or later I’m going to lose a fight. I don’t heal like people, someone has to repair me. Any parts that get broken won’t get fixed. If I don’t die, I’ll be a cripple, pieces falling off.” Like Travnicek, he thought, and a cold shudder ran through his mind. “And even if I’m crippled,” he went on, “I’ll still have to fight. I still won’t have any choice.”

There was a long silence. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Her voice was choked.

“I was sort of immortal before,” Modular Man said. “My creator was going to mass-produce me and sell me to the military. If any single unit was destroyed, the others would go on. They’d have identical programming; they’d still be me, at least mostly me. Now that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What happens to machines when they die? I’ve been wondering that.”

“I—”

“Your ancient philosophers never thought about that, right?”

“I suppose they didn’t. But they had a lot to say about mortality in general. ‘Must not all things be swallowed in death’—Plato, quoting Socrates.”

“Thank you. That’s really comforting.”

“There’s not a lot of comforting things to say about death. I’m sorry.”

“I never really worried about it before. I’d never died before.”

“Most of us don’t get to come back even once. None of the others killed on Wild Card Day came back.”

“This may be a temporary aberration. Normality may resume at any point.”

The android realized he was shouting. The words echoed on the empty street. He swiftly wrote himself a piece of programming to keep his voice level.

Kate thought for a long moment. “Most of us have a lifetime to get used to the idea that we have to die. You’ve just had a few hours.”

“I have a hard time getting my mind around it. There are all these feedback loops in my brain, and my thoughts keep going round and round. They’re taking up more and more space.”

“In other words, you’re panicking.”

“Am I?” He thought about this for a moment. “I suppose I am.”

“The prospect of death, to misquote Samuel Johnson, is supposed to concentrate the mind wonderfully.”

“I’ll work at it.” He suited action to words, swiftly putting an end to the runamuck computer logic that was smashing up against too many unknowns and infinities to do anything other than fill up his logic systems with macroatomic hash. A cooler and more systematic approach to the problem seemed indicated.

“Okay. That’s done.”

“That was fast.”

“One point six six six seconds.”

She laughed. “Not bad.”

“I’m glad you recognized what was happening. I’m not really wired to deal with abstracts. I’d never got hung up that way before.”

“You’re still superhuman. No human could do that.” She thought for a moment. “Do you know Millay? ‘My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light.’”

The android considered this. “I suppose that, aesthetically, I might have produced an objectively lovely light when I blew up. The thought seems a bit barren of comfort, mainly I suppose because I wasn’t there to see it.”

“I think you missed my point.” Patiently. “You are incredibly fast at both action and cognition. Your means of apprehending your surroundings are more complete and acute than those of a human. You have the capacity to experience your existence more thoroughly and intensely than anyone on the planet. Might this not compensate for any shortness of duration?”

The notion was encoded, spun into the maelstrom of the android’s electronic mind, whirled like a leaf into a cold electronic torrent.

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

“You seemed to have crammed a lot of existence into the months you were on the planet. You had many of the experiences that people say lead to wisdom. War, comradeship, love, responsibility—even death.”

The android gazed into the mutilated face of Barnett, the presidential candidate, and wondered who the man in the picture was. “I guess I kept busy,” he said.

“There are a lot of people who would envy that existence.”

“I’ll try to bear that in mind.”

“You burn very bright. Cherish that.”

“I’ll try.”

“And you may not burn out. You fought the Swarm without taking serious injury, and there were hundreds of thousands of them. These are just a couple of guys.”

“A couple of guys.”

“You’ll deal with it. I have confidence in you.”

“Thank you.” JOKER DEATH, the poster read. “I think you’ve given me something to consider.”

“I hope I could help. Call me if you need to talk again.”

“Thanks. You’ve really been of great assistance.”

“Anytime.”

Modular Man put the phone on the hook and rose silently into the sky. He rose into the darkness, drifted the several blocks to Travnicek’s apartment, went in through the skylight. Joker Death, he thought.

Travnicek was lying on his bed, apparently asleep. The camp bed was surrounded by empty tins of food: apparently he’d been eating the stuff right from the cans. Some of the organs around Travnicek’s neck had blossomed a bit, were making ultrasonic chirping sounds, the period of which decreased as the android dropped into the apartment. Sonar, the android thought. Travnicek opened the eyes around his neck.

“You,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“The module’s rebuilt. I think. Some of my memories were kind of hazy.”

Fear filled the android. A fly buzzed past and he chased it away with a flap of his arm. “I’ll try it.” He opened his jumpsuit and his chest, reached for the module that waited on the workbench.

“My brain seems to be evolving,” Travnicek said. His voice was dreamy. “I think what’s happening is that the virus is enlarging the brain sections concerned with sensory input. I’m perceiving things in every possible way now, very intensely. I’ve never experienced anything as intensely as I can just lying here, watching things.” He gave a hollow laugh. “My god! I never knew that eating creamed corn from the can could be such a sensual experience!”

Modular Man inserted the module, ran test patterns. Relief flooded him. The monitor worked.

“Very good, sir,” he said. “Hang on.”

“You’re so interesting this way,” Travnicek said. The fly was wandering near the empty food cans.

There was sudden movement. One of the organs around Travnicek’s neck uncoiled with lightning rapidity and caught the fly. The extrusion snapped back and stuffed the fly into Travnicek’s mouth.

The android couldn’t believe what he’d just seen.

“Wonderful,” said Travnicek. Smacking his lips.

“Hang on, sir,” Modular Man said again. His flux field crackled around him. He flew through the roof and into the blackness.

Arriving at the bank, the android turned insubstantial, burned every vault sensor with bursts from his microwave laser so that any guards couldn’t see what happened next, then stepped into the vault, solidified himself, and ripped the deposit box from its resting place.

Suddenly he stopped. A yellow warning light glowed in his mind, flickered, turned red.

He tried to go insubstantial again. He rotated ninety degrees from the real for a fraction of a second, then he felt something go and he was solid again, standing in the bank vault. He could smell something burning.

The flux monitor was gone again. Travnicek’s repairs hadn’t been permanent. A chill eddy of fear rippled through the android’s mind at the thought that it might have happened when he was in the steel-and-concrete wall of the vault.

He looked around, examined the door and the lock. If he were found here in the morning, he thought, his reputation as a do-gooder would definitely suffer.

It proved fortunate that vaults are made to prevent people breaking in, not out. Forty-five minutes’ patient work with the microwave laser burned a hole in the laminated interior of the door, gaining him access to the lock apparatus. He reached through, touched the mechanism, felt an awareness of its function. He glitched the electronics—easy as getting a free telephone call—and the heavy bolts slid back.

He took the emergency stairs out, burning cameras as he went. Once out he flew to the roof of a nearby building, tore the box open, and examined the contents.

Long-term leases, he found, to several small apartments in the New York area. Keys. Stacks of currency. Jewelry, gold coins. Bottles containing hundreds of pills. A pair of pistols and boxes of ammunition. Croyd’s secret stash of money, weapons, drugs, and the keys to his hideouts.

He thought for a long moment. Travnicek was deteriorating swiftly. The android was going to have to move fast, and he was going to have to get some help.

“I don’t want to have to do the scouting,” Modular Man said. “If they see me again, they’ll run. And they’ll spread the plague while they do it.”

“Very well.” Tachyon’s violet eyes glittered as his hands played with the velvet lapels of his lavender jacket. His .357 and holster sat on the desk before him. On his office wall, next to a set of honorary degrees, was a sign with red, white, and blue lettering: THE MAN: HARTMANN. THE TIME: 1988. THE PLAN: OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE.

“My joker squad can be of use. Some of them should prove capable of covert reconnaissance.”

“Good. I should stay here with your most powerful people. Then we can move out together.”

The contents of Croyd’s deposit box were spread out on Tachyon’s desk and he looked at them. “There are only three addresses actually in Manhattan,” Tachyon said. “I suspect he’d try for one of those first before trying the tunnels and bridges. Blind Sophie can use her acute hearing to listen in on what’s going on behind a closed window, using the vibrations of the window glass as a diaphragm. Squish is a taxi driver, hence unobtrusive … he might be able to make inquiries that might seem suspicious from anyone else.” Tachyon frowned. “Croyd’s companion, however … that handsome young gentleman is going to prove difficult to deal with.”

“I’ve fought him twice. But I think I know how his power works.”

Tachyon stared. He leaned forward over the desk, pushing aside the pistol in its holster, his expression intent. “Tell me, sir.”

“He absorbs energy, then returns it. He can only attack after he’s already been hit. He absorbs all sorts of energy—kinetic, radiation…”

“Psionic,” Tachyon murmured.

“But if you don’t hit him first, he doesn’t have any more strength than a normal person. So whatever we do, we can’t attack him. Just ignore him, no matter how tempting a target he makes himself.”

“Yes. Very good, Modular Man. You are to be commended.”

The android looked at Tachyon and apprehension spun through his mind. “I need to get Croyd away as fast as possible. I can’t catch the wild card from him, so I think I should deal with him solo—he’s got enough strength to tear through your biochemical warfare suits. I’m powerful enough to subdue him if I don’t have to worry about anyone else.”

“The task is yours.” Simply.

Triumph settled in the android. He was going to be able to seize Croyd and get him to Travnicek without interference.

Maybe things were looking up at last.

The phone rang on Tachyon’s desk. The alien snatched it.

“Tachyon here.” Modular Man saw Tachyon’s violet eyes dilate with interest. “Very good. You are to be commended, Sophie. Stay there until we arrive.” He returned the phone to its cradle. “Sophie believes they’re in the Perry Street address. She can hear two people, and one of them is talking nonstop as if he was affected by stimulants.”

The android jumped to his feet. His emergency pack had already been prepared, and he slung it on his back. Tachyon pressed a button on his telephone.

“Tell the squad to suit up,” he said. “And after a decent interval, inform the police.”

“I’ll fly on ahead,” the android said. He flung open the door and almost ran into a slim, erect black man who was standing just outside the door in the secretary’s office. He wore a biochem suit and a feathered black-and-white death’s-head mask. His smell was appalling, must and rotting flesh. A joker.

“Pardon me, sir,” the man said. His voice was an educated, somewhat theatrical baritone. “Could you take me with you?”

Modular Man’s software wove swift subroutines to eliminate the man’s smell from his sensory input. “I don’t believe I know you.”

“Mr. Gravemold.” A minute bow. “I am a member of the good doctor’s joker squad.”

“Can’t you travel with them in the ambulance?”

The android sensed a smile behind the dramatic mask. “I’m afraid that in the close confines of an automobile, my scent becomes rather … overwhelming.”

“I see your point.”

“Gravemold.” Tachyon’s voice was strangled. “What are you doing in my secretary’s office? Were you trying to eavesdrop?”

“That’s Mister Gravemold, Doctor.” The deep actor’s voice was sharp.

“Beg pardon, I’m sure.” Tachyon’s voice was denasal.

“In answer to your question, I was waiting to speak to our artificial friend. I wished to spare the other squad members the burden of my … perfume.”

“Right.” Through clenched teeth. “Do as you please, Modular Man.”

The android and Mr. Gravemold left the clinic at a fast trot, and then Modular Man wrapped his arms around the joker from behind and lifted him into the air. Air ruffled the feathers on Mr. Gravemold’s mask.

“Sir,” the android said. “Are there any abilities you have besides, ah…”

“My smell?” The deep voice was barren of amusement. “Indeed I have. As well as smelling as if I were dead, I have the powers of death. I can bring the cold of the grave to my enemies.”

“That sounds … useful.” Crazy, the android thought. The joker had been smelling his own perfume too long and it had driven him mad.

“I’m also fast and tough,” Mr. Gravemold added.

“Good. So is Croyd.” Quickly the android explained about the albino and his abilities, and also about the nature of his bodyguard. “Oh, yes,” he added. “And Croyd is carrying a gun. A forty-four Automag.”

“A preposterous weapon. He must be feeling insecure.”

“Glad it doesn’t bother you.”

The Perry Street brownstone came in sight below. Modular Man dropped to the ground a few feet downwind of a slim, long-haired, middle-aged woman wearing shades and carrying a white cane. She was standing in the shadows by a doorstoop. The woman looked up. Her nose wrinkled.

“Gravemold,” she said.

“Mister Gravemold, if you please.”

“In that case,” said Blind Sophie, “I’m Miss Yudkowski.”

“I have never referred to you by any other name, madam.”

A pair of ears, round like those of a cartoon mouse, seemed to inflate on either side of Sophie’s head, rising like balloons past concealing strands of long, dark hair. She cocked her head toward Modular Man. “Hello, whoever you are. I didn’t hear you till now.”

“I didn’t know I made any noise.”

“You’re a little late, gentlemen,” Sophie said. “The two men left a couple minutes ago. Just after I got back from the telephone.”

Annoyance flickered through the android’s circuits. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“God forbid I should interfere with Mr. Gravemold correcting my speech.”

“Where did they go?”

“They didn’t say. I believe they took the back way out.”

Without saying anything more Modular Man seized Mr. Gravemold again and rose into the sky. He swiftly quartered the district, radar searching out. Mr. Gravemold lay passively in his arms. Silent, the android thought, as the grave.

“We’re on the way.” Tachyon’s voice crackled on Modular Man’s receivers.

“There’s a problem,” Modular Man said, pulsing silent radio waves toward the clinic. He explained quickly.

“We shall continue heading in your direction, Modular Man,” Tachyon said.

“There,” said Mr. Gravemold, pointing. A pair of human-size radar images detached themselves from the shadow of a rusting iron pillar that helped support the deserted West Side Express Highway.

The android was surprised. The joker had incredibly good night vision. The android drifted silently toward the pair. He had to come within three hundred yards before he was certain the two were Croyd and his companion.

Uneasiness stirred him. The last time he’d almost died.

Burning bright. Kate’s voice echoed in his mind.

Each was burdened: the young man held a bulky parcel, and Croyd carried an outboard motor over one shoulder. Croyd was talking endlessly, but the android couldn’t hear him. The two walked swift down a corroded concrete street and came to a stop at a chain link fence that cut off a Hudson River pier from the mainland. The albino put down his burden, inspected the padlock and chain that held the gate shut, and snapped the hasp with a quick twist of his fingers. The two moved through the gate and passed by a deserted guard box with shattered windows.

The pier was otherwise deserted. Except for a few ships caught here under quarantine, New York Harbor was empty, a contrast to the blaze of activity on the Jersey shore.

“They’re going to try to get off the island,” said Mr. Gravemold.

“So it would seem.”

“Put me down. We can deal with it.”

“A moment. I’ve got to contact Tachyon.” He sent Tachyon a radio message, heard no answer, and had to rise another five hundred feet before his pulse carried to the ambulance. Mr. Gravemold stirred restlessly.

“What are you doing, man? They’re getting away. Put me down.”

As soon as he heard an acknowledgment, Modular Man descended rapidly. Going to fight Croyd again, he thought. He remembered his first moments of existence, the confused fight around the Empire State Building, Cyndi’s blond hair floating like a brilliant star above the ape’s dark hand. Burning brightly, he thought.

He dropped Mr. Gravemold near the gate. The joker dusted himself off. “What was that all about?” he demanded.

“I’ll explain later.”

Both jumped at the sound of a moan from nearby. The android’s alarm faded as he saw a pudgy, unconscious man lying near the fence, a bottle of bourbon near his tattooed hand. The drunk wore leather trousers and boots and an NYPD cap. His chest was bare and featured steel rings hanging from pierced nipples.

Modular Man fixed this sight in his memory. Cherish it, he thought.

“We can’t wait,” the joker said. “Those two will get away before the ambulance arrives.”

Mr. Gravemold turned away and removed his mask. There was no facial deformity that Modular Man could see from behind. The joker put on his hood and gas mask and began to move with speed down the pier, following a pair of rusted railroad tracks. His feet stepped in surprising silence.

“Wait,” said Modular Man. “They’ll see you.”

The joker paid no attention. He moved toward the edge of the pier, ducked under a railing, and disappeared. Alarm rattled in Modular Man’s mind. He took to the air and did a half-roll under the pier.

Mr. Gravemold was still moving, walking inverted on the old, corroded planks, his pace brisk, the dark and silent Hudson rolling beneath his head. The android flew up next to him.

A possibility occurred to him. His mind ran scans, cross-checks.

The possibility was confirmed at greater than ninety percent. Build, talents, race, approximate age … everything matched. The accents were wildly different, and the voices substantially different as to tone and timbre, but scans of certain key words showed a surprising correspondence.

Why, Modular Man wondered, had Wall Walker made himself smell bad and disguised himself as a joker?

Or was that another manifestation of Wall Walker’s wild card? Maybe he was Wall Walker part of the time, and then he started smelling bad and became Mr. Gravemold.

Maybe he was just crazy. Why else would someone disguise himself as a joker?

He decided not to mention his conclusions to the inverted ace beside him.

“You didn’t mention you could walk upside down,” he said.

“Did I not?” The voice was muffled by the mask. “Sometimes I’m a bit forgetful.”

“Is there anything else you can do that I should know?”

Modular Man began to hear Croyd’s voice. Mr. Gravemold looked at him. “Shhh. Be silent.” The android sensed a grim smile behind the mask. “Silent as the grave.”

They moved on. Mr. Gravemold moved easily through a tangle of wood and metal pier supports that loomed around them like the ribs of some giant, extinct animal. Croyd’s voice grew louder. Modular Man remembered the shower of flaming stars that signaled the descent of the Swarm. Burning bright.

“Never had a fucking chance,” Croyd said. “Jesus. Never learned a goddamn thing about the fucking world. Not algebra. Not anything.” He laughed. “I taught them a thing or two. Stick with me, kid. We’re gonna give ’em some very interesting lessons, you and me.”

The android thought about Cyndi, Alice, the others. Didn’t I see you at the ape escape? He thought about burning brightly and tried to make his movement precise, perfect. Tried to find the wonder in this situation, flying beneath a pier with the slick water waiting beneath him and a very likely insane, upside-down disguised ace walking purposefully beside him.

Halfway down the pier was a wooden ladder that reached down into the dark water. Croyd’s voice seemed to come from just overhead.

“Okay, kid. Here we go. Just follow the ol’ Sleeper. I know how to survive in this world.”

Mr. Gravemold turned to the android and gestured. Despite the clumsiness of his suit, the meaning was clear: You fly over the opposite side of the pier, I’ll wait here.

Great, the android thought. I charge, and while they’re killing me, Gravemold attacks from behind. Terrific.

“Bring me the package, kid.” Croyd’s voice.

There seemed no time to engage in a debate with Mr. Gravemold. The android drifted backward across the pier, weaving his way through the metal supports, and then rose from the other side.

Croyd was standing by the ladder, facing his companion, and by coincidence, the android. Croyd’s friend had a small knife out and had cut away the string and paper wrapping his package.

Croyd snapped to attention. “Shit! The robot!” His arm a blur of swift motion, he reached for his gun.

Not again, thought the android. He accelerated, heading straight for the albino.

Croyd made frantic tugging motions. The huge silver handgun seemed to have snagged in his armpit. His companion, without the unnatural speed possessed by the others, slowly turned and spun between Croyd and the charging android.

Choices rained on the android’s circuits. He couldn’t hit Croyd’s bodyguard, not without charging him with energy, and he couldn’t get to Croyd without going through the other. He dove for the surface of the pier, landed on his hands, tumbled. Splinters tore at his jumpsuit. He came to a halt at the young man’s feet. The man stared at him.

There was a rip of fabric. With a triumphant cry Croyd jerked his gun free and leveled it. Black pills scattered like dirty snow, spilling from a torn inner pocket.

Mr. Gravemold rose behind Croyd, sudden and ominous as a specter. His gloved hand reached out and closed over the gun. He jerked it back, and the Automag went off with a sound like the end of the world.

The joker gave a yell as the gun’s action slammed back under his hand. The gun clattered to the surface of the pier. The bullet, which had hit Croyd’s bodyguard in the back, fell also.

Ooops, thought Modular Man.

The young man dived for him, right fist clenched. Modular Man rolled away. The man flopped on top of him, burning his power charge as he drove his fist into the planks. The android kicked up, throwing the man over onto his back. He had probably given him a small charge, but it wasn’t enough to worry about.

Croyd in the meantime had slammed his elbow into Mr. Gravemold’s sternum. The joker bounced back against the rail. Rusted nails moaned. Croyd scooped up the outboard engine, looked over his shoulder, and flung it full strength, not at his foes, but at his bodyguard. Trying to charge him up, the android thought.

He flew up into the engine’s path. It thudded solidly into his shoulder, driving him back. Croyd’s companion reached up and seized the android’s feet. Fingers dug with desperate strength into his plastic flesh.

Mr. Gravemold flung himself off the rail, smashing Croyd from behind with a forearm. Croyd spun, his fingers talons. His pink eyes gleamed murderously. He clawed at the joker, trying to puncture his suit. Mr. Gravemold danced out of the way. Both were moving unnaturally fast.

Modular Man rose into the sky. The young man clung gamely to his legs. Kicking at him, the android thought, would only make him stronger.

Suddenly Croyd shuddered. He gasped, clutched at his middle. The balmy summer air suddenly turned a few degrees colder.

The cold of the grave, the android thought. It wasn’t some fancy metaphor. The joker had actually meant what he said.

Lights flashed on the far end of the pier. A siren wailed. The ambulance from the Jokertown Clinic had arrived.

Croyd staggered back. He seized the package, flung it at Mr. Gravemold. The joker easily avoided it. It splashed into the water beyond.

“Death is cold, Mr. Crenson,” said Mr. Gravemold. His deep actor’s voice rang past his gas mask, over the sound of the approaching ambulance. “Death is cold, and I am cold as death.”

The joker raised a clenched fist, and the temperature dropped again. Mr. Gravemold, Modular Man realized, was stealing heat from the air. Croyd stumbled, went down on one knee. His white face had turned blue. His companion gave a cry of outrage and dropped to the surface of the pier with the Automag right in front him. He snatched up the gun and pointed it at the figure in the biochem suit.

Croyd fell flat on his face. His limbs twitched uncontrollably.

The android dove at maximum speed. The gun went off like a clap of thunder. A heavy slug caromed off Modular Man’s metal substructure and tumbled away into the night. The bullet’s energy began to spin the android. Unable to stop himself in time, he smashed through the guardrail and zoomed over the Hudson. He stabilized the spin and began to loop back toward the fight.

Ambulance lights flashed bright across the pier. Below, the package was inflating automatically at the touch of the water. A rubber raft.

Mr. Gravemold, still moving with unnatural speed, danced away from Croyd’s bodyguard. The young man had difficulty tracking with the heavy gun. He fired twice and missed both times.

Mr. Gravemold raised his fist. “No!” Modular Man shouted.

The temperature dropped again. Croyd’s bodyguard staggered and fell, the gun falling from his hand.

It worked, the android thought numbly. Then he realized that Mr. Gravemold’s abilities didn’t fire cold, but rather stole heat. With energy going out rather than in, the bodyguard’s talent had nothing to work with.

Modular Man did a loop in air, came down on the albino, seized Croyd by collar and belt. Brakes shrieked as the ambulance came to a stop. Jokers in biochem suits spilled out. Laughter boomed from behind Mr. Gravemold’s gas mask.

The android rose into the sky with his shivering burden and accelerated. Puzzled jokers, their face masks giving them tunnel vision, peered at the sky, trying to see where he and Croyd had gone.

Modular Man shook Croyd like a rag doll. “Why did you blow me up?” he shouted.

Croyd’s teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult to understand him.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Buildings sped beneath them. Fury raced through the android. He shook Croyd again. “Why?”

Croyd began to thrash. Modular Man suppressed the albino’s uncoordinated movements with ease.

He had won, he realized. Carefully he tried to cherish the feeling.

Croyd was shivering uncontrollably as Modular Man lighted on a rooftop and took off the emergency pack he’d strapped to his back in the clinic. It contained a biochem suit, a blanket, a canvas tarpaulin, a sack, and some cord. The android wrapped the albino in a blanket before stuffing him into the biochem warfare suit.

“Who are you working for?” Croyd’s teeth chattered louder than his voice. “The Mafia? The other guys?”

The android screamed at him. “Why did you blow me up?”

In the darkness Croyd’s eyes were the color of blood. “Seemed like a good idea then,” he said. “Better idea now.”

A shivering fit struck him, and his teeth began to chatter like castanets. The albino’s skin was a vivid turquoise, the same color as Travnicek’s. He seemed barely conscious. The android closed the face mask and put a cloth flour sack over Croyd’s head. He then wrapped Croyd in the canvas tarpaulin and tied him securely with the nylon cord. Even a person of unusual strength, the android thought, shouldn’t be able to fight his way out of something that gave him no freedom of movement.

The android picked up his burden and flew on, spiraling down onto Travnicek’s roof next to the skylight. Light shone upward through cracks in the black paint. He reached for the skylight.

“Over here, toaster.”

Travnicek was standing naked atop the pointed roof of a water tower on the next building. His voice no longer came from his mouth, which seemed to be sealing up; one of the organs around his neck, one shaped like a speaking trumpet, had taken over that function. His middle-European accent had come through the transformation untouched.

“That’s the Croyd person, yes?”

“That’s correct.” The android took his burden to the next roof and lowered it to a tarred surface still warm from the summer sunlight. Travnicek leaped the thirty feet from the top of the tower and landed effortlessly next to the bound figure. He bent, his organ-lei rustling as it focused on the albino. The sound of chattering teeth came from beneath the flour sack.

“I can see the viruses in there, right through that bag you’ve got over his head,” Travnicek said. “I don’t know how just yet, but I can see them. The wild cards are very alive, very eager to enter my body and … subvert my programming.” A laugh floated from his speaking-trumpet. A mental chill flowed through the android at the noise, at how inhuman the laugh sounded without a throat to generate it.

Modular Man bent over the trembling figure of Croyd. “I will open the hood and mask. If you lean close, sir, and inhale, you should get another dose of the virus.”

Travnicek laughed again. “You’re a fool, toaster. A fool.”

What rose in the android was not despair, but a bleak and hopeless confirmation of despair. “You ordered me to bring him. You wanted to be reinfected.”

“That was before I realized what I was.” The laugh came again. “I’m strong, I’m youthful, and I perceive the world in ways that no human ever dreamed were possible,” He turned his back on the android and walked to the parapet. He stood on the edge of the roof and let the lights of Jokertown play on his azure skin. “This city is so tasty,” he said. “I can feel the light, perceive motion and wind.” His organ-lei rose toward the sky. “I can hear the stars singing. My senses range from the microscopic to the macrocosmic. Why should I want to lose this?”

“Your genius, sir. The genius that created me. If you don’t regain it…”

“What good did it ever do me? What pleasure did it bring?” He laughed. “Years of bad food and no sleep, years of listening to voices babble in my head, years of no friendships, of fucking cheap tarts in alleyways because I didn’t dare let them into my workplace.…” He gave a snarl and turned to the android.

“It’s gonna change, blender. I’m gonna have a real life now. And the first thing, you get me some money.”

“I—”

“Real money. A couple hundred thousand for a start. Just walk into a bank vault and grab it.”

The android gazed at the garland of yellow eyes. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And get rid of that Croyd person. Where he won’t bother anyone.”

“Yes, sir.”

Travnicek walked from the parapet to the iron base of the tower, then jumped six feet and clung to the side of the tower with hands and feet. He walked deliberately to its pointed crown and crouched, looking at the city.

“The world’s my oyster,” he said. “You’re gonna open it for me.”

The warm June night had gone cold. Croyd kicked and gave a yell. Modular Man picked him up and flew into the night, heading for the clinic.

A trumpet-flower laugh followed his silent ascent.

Travnicek, dressed in new custom-made clothing, stood with a woman on the observation deck of Aces High. Her hair was blond and curly, her dress light and low-cut and very nearly transparent. She wore white plastic boots. Travnicek leaned toward her, blue tongues lapping from his organ-lei, making wet tracks on her face. She shuddered and turned away.

“Fuck this, man. You’re not paying me enough.”

Travnicek reached into a pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. “How much enough do you want?” He held up a hundred-dollar bill.

The blond woman hesitated. Her face set into lines of determination. “A lot more.”

Hiram wandered past like a ghost, his eyes tracking over the restaurant but seeing nothing.

“Jesus.” A customer’s voice drifted over the sound of the crowd. “Hiram never used to allow that kind of thing.”

Modular Man winced and turned away. His seat near the window of the restaurant, within listening distance of the platform, gave him a far better view of Travnicek than he wanted.

There were some experiences he could not bring himself to cherish.

Kate looked over her shoulder at the twosome and lit a cigarette. “Quite an approach.”

“It seems to work quite well.”

She looked at him. “I detect a certain edge in your comment. Do you know the guy?”

“I have made his acquaintance.”

“Okay. I won’t ask.”

Travnicek, laughing, handed the woman a roll of bills. His tongues, or whatever they were, continued to explore the woman. There were sounds of disgust from the bar.

Ignoring the fuss, the red-haired waitress stepped to the table. “Dessert?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the android. “The crostata, the orange tart, and the chocolate sabayon pie.”

“Yes, sir. And anything for the lady?”

Kate looked at Modular Man and stuck out her tongue. “Not for me. I’m counting calories.”

“Very well. Coffee?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Kate tapped cigarette ash into an ashtray. She was a small woman, with straying brown hair and warm Jeanne Moreau eyes.

“I’m not sure even Epicurus would approve of all this gorging,” she said.

“My days are numbered. I want to try everything.” He smiled. “Besides, I don’t gain calories.”

“Just amps. I know.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Are you all right? Now that you’ve fallen from Olympus and are living among the mortals?”

“I think I’m getting used to it. I’m still not certain I like it, though.”

“And your creator?”

“His genius is gone.”

“So you’re on your own.”

“No. I’m still compelled to obey him. Also to fight enemies of society in my spare time.” And break into safes, he thought, though he didn’t say it. Wearing a disguise, so no one recognizes me.

She looked troubled. “I wish there was something we could do.”

“There appears not to be.”

“Still.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “You could learn physics. Metallurgy. That sort of thing. It could keep you going.”

“Yes. I could enroll in night school.”

“Why not full time?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

Kate laughed. “They can bar a person from the classroom for not paying tuition. I don’t know about a machine.”

“Maybe I’ll find out.”

The android looked at his partner. “Thank you. You’ve helped me get things in perspective.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

Someone’s head appeared above the observation deck balcony. Wall Walker’s. The android started, remembering Mr. Gravemold. Why would someone disguise himself as a joker?

The young ace stepped over the balcony and entered the bar.

The waitress brought the dessert tray and a pot of coffee. Kate, looking balefully at the desserts, pushed back her chair. “Time for a bathroom check. And then”—she sighed—“I’ve got to get back to Statius and company.”

The waitress moved the dessert tray to allow a customer to pass. The android recognized the nondescript brown-headed man who had been in the restaurant the day he’d spoken to Wall Walker. He nodded at the man but spoke to Kate.

“Thank you for joining me,” he said. “I kept expecting an emergency of some sort to interrupt the dinner. An alien invasion, an ape escape, something.”

Kate looked surprised. “Oh. You hadn’t heard about the ape?”

The android’s heart began to sink. “No. I hadn’t.”

“He’s not an ape anymore. He—”

Modular Man raised a hand. “Spare me.”

The lanky brown-haired customer looked at them. “In fact,” he said, “I’m the ape.”

The android looked at him. The man held out a hand. “Jeremiah Strauss,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

The android allowed his hand to be shaken. “Hi,” he said.

“I don’t do the ape anymore.” Jeremiah Strauss seemed eager for company. “But I can still do Bogart. Watch this!”

The ex-ape began to concentrate. His features slowly began to rearrange themselves. “I’m not gonna play the sap for you, sweetheart,” he lisped. His face looked like Bogart’s must have looked in his coffin.

“Very good,” Modular Man said, appalled.

“You wanna see Cagney?”

He looked at Kate, saw her glassy stare. “Maybe some other time.”

Strauss seemed stricken. “Too eager, huh?” he said. “Sorry. I just haven’t caught up yet. You think it was bad being dead for a year, man, trying being a giant ape for twenty. Jesus, last I heard, Ronald Reagan was an actor.”

“Bathroom,” Kate said. She looked at Strauss. “Nice to meet you.”

She fled. Modular Man shook Strauss’s hand and said good-bye

The waitress pushed the cart back to the table and handed him his desserts. “We had a message for you a couple days ago,” she said. She gave him a wink. “A call from California. I thought maybe it would be a bad idea to give it to you when you were with another lady, though.” She reached into a pocket and gave the android a pink message slip. A long-distance number was written at the top.

Welcome back. New phone number. Call soon. Love, Cyndi. P.S. Got your heart on?

Modular Man memorized the number, smiled, crumpled the paper.

Cherish, he thought.

“Thank you,” he said. “If the lady should call again, tell her the answer is yes.”

He reached for his desserts.

New experiences were everywhere.