“That doesn’t matter. We do.”
Modular Man, since the rout of the peace mission, had spent most of the afternoon being debriefed by Bloat’s assistants. Zappa’s plans for overwhelming the Rox with a barrage of missiles had both impressed and angered them. It appeared they had been expecting another attack by ground troops, much like the last.
“Come with me,” Kafka said. “I’ll show you our maps.”
Kafka led Modular Man up several flights of stairs, into a part of the castle made of gray stone instead of glass, and then down a long corridor tiled in black-and-white slate. Graceful Romanesque window arches were supported by columns painted in spirals of white and blue. Stained-glass windows showed heroic, legendary scenes, identified in strong Roman letters: LOHENGRIN DISPLAYS THE GRAIL, YSVELT MOVRNS FOR TRISTRAM, THEODEN DEFEATS THE ORCS OF SARVMAN. The panicked, screaming ores all looked like jokers in armor. Kafka didn’t seem to notice.
The end of the corridor was less impressive — the bare stone was fused and scabbed, as if it had been melted, and a misshapen door was set into it. Apparently Bloat hadn’t thought out this part of the building very thoroughly. Kafka led Modular Man inside. Inside, high in a tower, was what looked like a medieval version of Zappa’s headquarters. Communications equipment was stacked on shelves; maps were pinned to the wall; a large reel-to-reel tape recorder spun on a desktop; an intent four-eyed joker worked a court reporter’s stenography machine; a legless joker in a wheelchair frowned at pins in a map. Light was provided by fluorescents and cross-shaped arrow slits.
In the center of the room was a thin young woman, maybe eighteen, lying on a couch. The arms of the couch were carved to look like swans. The woman wore combat fatigues, a wide cloth band across her eyes, and a floppy black beret down over one ear. As the door opened her head turned toward the sound.
“It’s Kafka, Patchwork,” the joker said. “I’ve got Modular Man with me.”
The woman gave a thin smile. Modular Man noticed a spray of freckles across her nose. She held out her hand, not toward Modular Man but in his direction. She was blind.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Modular Woman.”
The android didn’t quite know what to make of this. He took the hand. “Hello,” he said.
“Call me Pat.”
“Okay.”
She turned toward the stenographer and tilted her head back. “I just heard about the location of another platoon of 155s. Inside the perimeter of Newark International, northeast corner. They’re digging them in.”
“Mobile or towed?”
A hesitation. “Towed. I think.”
A labeled pin went into the map. Kafka turned to Modular Man. “Patchwork can’t get a full view of a lot of the maps,” he said. “She’s vague on some of her information. But if your data can be cross-referenced with hers, we can get a pretty good view of Zappa’s dispositions.”
The android looked at Patchwork. “How are you getting this?” he asked.
Patchwork lifted the bandage covering her empty eye sockets, and the beret covering another socket where her ear should be. “One of my eyes and my missing ear are sitting on a shelf in Zappa’s communications center. One of our people put them there.”
“Modular Woman.” The android nodded. “I get it now.”
Patchwork slid the bandage down over her sockets again. “The other eye isn’t getting much,” she said. “Not since Pulse and Mistral left. Maybe you could send somebody to get it back?”
Kafka made an agitated movement. “Let’s get this debriefing over with,” he said. “We’ve all got plans to make.”
Not quite, the android thought.
Everyone was making plans but him. And he didn’t have any choice but to try to fit into whatever plans were made.
Detroit Steel’s armor stood in center field like Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still, but it didn’t look like anyone was home. None of the other aces were in evidence.
“WHERE IS EVERYBODY?” Tom asked one of the officers working on the Rox model.
“General Zappa’s down in command HQ with his staff,” a captain told him. “Some of the aces went out to get dinner.”
There was nothing to do for it but wait. Tom drifted out over the outfield and set the shell down on the grass beside Detroit Steel. He popped his seat belt and stretched. It felt good to relax. He could feel a mother of a headache coming on. Sometimes that happened when he overdid the telekinesis for a long period of time.
He turned off his cameras to let darkness fill the shell. There was a can of Schaefer in his miniature fridge. He washed down two aspirin with a swallow of beer. Then he reclined his seat all the way, and stared at the darkness. Sleep would have been nice, but there was no way. He wished Dr. Tachyon hadn’t run off to the stars. Bloat respected Tachyon; he might have listened to him. As it was, the jokers had left them with damn little choice.
It was easy to lose track of time as he lay there in the dark, sipping his can of beer and thinking. The sound of someone knocking on his shell brought him out of his reverie.
Tom sat up, turned on the nearest camera. A bald woman was outside, leaning into his lens, a little white cardboard container in one hand. The only hair on her shaved head was a buzz-cut purple lightning bolt right down the center. Her skintight red leather jumpsuit glittered with golden studs, and she wore a tiny gold skull in her right nostril.
For one awful second Tom thought the jumpers had found him. Then he realized that the girl was Danny Shepherd.
It was the smile that gave her away. The hair, the clothes, everything was different, but her smile was the same. Tom pressed a button to turn on his exterior mikes.
one home?” She glanced over her shoulder at a man standing behind her. “I don’t think he’s in there, Mike.”
“I’M HERE,” Tom boomed. Danny winced. Tom twisted a dial to lower the volume. “I was, ah, resting,” he explained.
Danny waved the cardboard container. “We went over to Chinatown, got some Chinese food. Come on out and join us.”
Tom found himself staring at the skull in her nose. He felt like Rip Van Winkle. When had Danny found time to get her nose pierced? Never mind getting a haircut and a new leather wardrobe. He’d only been gone a few hours. “I, uh, don’t do that,” he said.
“You don’t do what?” Danny asked. “You don’t come out? Or you don’t eat Chinese food?”
“I don’t come out,” Tom explained.
“Ever?” said the man behind her. He was a big guy about Cyclone’s age, with close-cropped blond hair and a beer gut. His arms were full of brown paper sacks. “That’s no way to live. I ought to know.”
Tom got it. “You’re Detroit Steel.”
“Mike Tsakos,” he said. “That’s Detroit Steel.” With both hands full, he had to use his chin to gesture toward the armored suit. “I got to put this stuff down,” he said, moving off camera.
“You sure you’re not hungry?” Danny asked. “We’ve got a real Chinese feast here. Egg rolls, pot-stickers, moo shu pork, lemon duck, hot shredded Hunan beef, three-flavor shrimp, fried rice…” She looked behind her. “What am I leaving out, Mike?”
“Chicken chow mein,” Mike Tsakos called out.
Danny made a face. “Right. I was trying to forget.”
“General Tso’s chicken,” a woman’s voice called. “Extra hot.” It sounded like Danny.
But Danny was right there in front of Tom’s camera. “Just who is this General Tso, I wonder, and why are we eating his chicken?” she said lightly.
Suddenly Tom was very confused. He threw a row of switches, one after the other, turning on the rest of his cameras. His screens blinked on, giving him a 360-degree view.