“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, c
ackled 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.