Travnicek moved toward the workbench and studied the sphere from a respectful distance.
"Perhaps it requires proximity to work it," the android suggested. "Maybe you should touch it."
"Maybe you should mind your own fucking business. I'm not getting near that goddamn thing."
"Yes, sir." The android was silent for a moment. Travnicek sipped his coffee. Then he shook his head and turned away from the workbench.
"You can fly off to Peru tomorrow to join your Army friends. And make contact with the South American governments while you're at it. Maybe they'll pay more than the Pentagon."
"Yes, sir."
Travnicek rubbed his hands. "I feel like celebrating, blender. Go to the store and get me a bottle of cold duck and some jelly doughnuts."
"Yes, sir." The android, his face expressionless, turned insubstantial and rocketed up through the ceiling. Travnicek went into the small heated room he slept in, turned on the television, and sat in a worn-out easy chair. Amid last-minute Christmas Eve hype for last-minute shoppers, the tube was featuring a Japanese cartoon about a giant android that fought fire-breathing lizards. Travnicek loved it. He settled back to watch.
When the android returned, he found Travnicek asleep. Reginald Owen was playing Scrooge on the screen. Modular Man put the bag down quietly and withdrew.
Maybe Cyndi was home.
Coleman Hubbard sat in institutional clothing in his ward at Bellevue. Brain-damaged people walked, argued, played cards. A little plastic tree winked at the nurses' station. Unseen to anyone except Detective John F X. Black, Amun floated in regal majesty above Hubbard's head, listening to Hubbard as he spoke.
"One one nought one nought nought nought one one nought one one one.."
"Twenty-four hours," Black said. "We can't get anything out of him but this."
"One nought nought nought one nought…"
The image of Amun seemed to fade for a moment, and Hubbard caught a glimpse of the figure of a thin old man with eyes like broken shadows. Then Amun was back.
I can't contact him. Not even to cause him pain. It's as if his mind has been in touch with… some kind of machine. His hands clenched into fists. What happened to him? What did he make contact with out there?
Black raised an eyebrow. TIAMAT?
No. TIAMAT isn't like that-TIAMAT is more alive than anything you'll ever know.
".. nought one one nought nought nought one nought…"
When I found him, I saw the bag lady, put her to sleep, and found nothing in her bags. Whatever is was, someone else has it now.
".. one nought nought one nought."
The ram's eyes turned to fire, and then his body twisted, becoming a lean greyhound shape with a curved snout and bared fangs, a giant forked tail towering over his back. Fear touched Black's neck. Amun had become Setekh the destroyer. The astral illusion was terrifyingly real. Black expected to see blood dripping from the animal's snout, but it wasn't there. Not yet, anyway.
He used you on an unauthorized mission, Setekh said. As part of a plot that was probably aimed against me. Now, he is a danger to us all. If he snaps out of this, he may say something he shouldn't.
Destroy him, Master, Black said.
Foam dribbled from the thing's snout, smoked on the floor. The other patients paid no attention. The great hound hesitated.
If I get into his head I might get… whatever he's got. Black shrugged. Want me to handle it?
Yes. I think that would be best.
I already planted the will in his apartment. The one that leaves everything to our organization.
The beast's tongue lolled. The look in its eyes softened. You're thinking ahead. I like that. Maybe we can work you a promotion.
Millions of miles from Earth, almost eclipsed by the sun, the Swarm Mother contemplated her scattered, surviving budlings. Observers on Earth would have been surprised to know that the Swarm did not consider its attack a failure. The assault had been launched more as a probe than as a serious attempt at conquest, and the Swarm, analyzing the data received from its creatures, developed a number of hypotheses.
The Thracian Swarm had been confronted by three responses that utterly failed to cooperate with one another. It was possible, the Swarm considered, that the Earth. was divided between several entities, Swarm Mother-equivalents, who did not assist one another in their endeavors.
Large numbers of the Siberian Swarm had been destroyed at once, broadcasting their telepathic agony to their parent. It was obvious that the Earth mothers possessed some manner of devastating weapon, which, however, they were reluctant to use except in uninhabited areas. Perhaps the environmental effects were distressing.
Possibly, the Swarm reasoned, if the Earth mothers were divided and all possessed such weapons, they could be turned against one another. If Earth was thereby rendered uninhabitable, the Swarm was willing to wait the thousands of years necessary for Earth to become useful again. The span of time would be nothing compared to the years the Swarm had already waited.
The Swarm, as it was eclipsed by the sun, decided to concentrate its monitoring activities on confirming these hypotheses.
It sensed possibilities here.
"So I says to Maxine, I says, When are you gonna do something about that condition of yours? I says, It's time to let a doctor see it…"
The bag lady, one shopping bag hanging from her arm while she clutched a second bag to her chest, walked slowly down the alley, fighting the Siberian wind.
Cyndi's blond hair flailed in the breeze as she shivered in a calfskin jacket. She watched as Modular Man tried to talk to the woman, give her a take-out bag filled with Chinese food, but she continued mumbling to herself and plodding up the alley. Finally the android stuffed the take-out bag into her shopping bag and returned to where Cyndi waited.
"Surrender, Mod Man. There isn't anything you can do for her. "
He took her in his arms and spiraled into the sky. "I keep thinking there's something."
"Superhuman powers aren't an answer to everything, Mod Man. You have to learn to come to terms with your limitations."
The android said nothing.
"The thing you need to understand, if this business isn't going to drive you crazy, is that no one's invented a wild card power that can do a goddamn thing for old ladies who are out of their heads and who carry their whole world with them in shopping bags and live in garbage cans. I don't have any powers, and even I know that." She paused. "You listening, Mod Man?"
"Yes. I hear you. You know, you're awfully hard-bitten for a girl just arrived from Minnesota."
"Hey. Hibbing is a tough town during a recession." They floated up toward Aces High. Cyndi reached into her jacket pocket and produced a small package wrapped in red ribbon. "I got you a present," she said. "Seeing as it's our last night together. Merry Christmas."
The android seemed embarrassed. "I didn't think to get you anything," he said.
"That's all right. You've had things on your mind." Modular Man opened the package. The wind caught the bright ribbon and spiraled it down into the darkness. Inside was a gold pin in the shape of a playing card, the ace of hearts, with the words MY HERO engraved.
" I figured you could use cheering up. You can wear it on your jockey shorts."
"Thank you. It's a nice thought."
"You're welcome." Cyndi hugged him.
The Empire State threw a spear of colored spotlights into the night. The pair landed on Hiram's terrace. The busy sounds of the bar could be heard even over the gusting wind.
A Christmas Eve crowd was celebrating. Cyndi and Modular Man gazed for a long moment through the windows. "Hey," she said. "I'm tired of rich food."
The android thought a moment. "Me, too."
"How about that Chinese place? Then we can go to my apartment. "