"Which missile?" Remo asked, stroking a nerve cluster beneath the professor's left earlobe.
"The Volga," she whinnied. "The new Soviet superweapon."
"Ojaly one missile?"
"One is all they need," she said, her nostrils flaring.
"What's your computer do after it tracks this Volga thing?"
The professor was thrashing, her sagging breasts twirling in dual counterclockwise circles. "It destroys it, if we want. Or we can make it get lost. From earth, without any advanced range in-
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strumentation aircraft. It can find the Volga, track it to 150 miles above the earth, and smear it across the sky like jelly, all ... without . . . leaving ... this .. . lab.. .." she chanted rhythmically.
"Does anybody besides you know what your LC-111 can do?" He pinched a spot on her scalp. She began to drool and kick her feet in the àir.
"Everyone knows what it can do, unfortunately. NASA, the President, everybody. A whole slew of Russian agents in Moscow Center, probably. It doesn't matter who knows about it. Even Ralph Dickey knew about it. Probably told every Communist fag in town."
"Knew? Told?" Remo said.
"Knows. Tells," she corrected. "Anyway, what counts is how the LC-111 works. The laser theory used in programming that computer is so complex, it took me ten years to work it out, and I'm the best there is. To steal the secret of how the machine works, they'd need the machine," she said triumphantly.
"I hate to break it to you, professor," Remo said, "but somebody's got the machine."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, laughing. "You only think someone has it. Actually, the LC-111 is right-"
Suddenly the table emitted a shriek, and an electric shock that propelled the professor to the floor. After sensing the first tremors of the shock, Remo automatically leaped into the air. He thought he cleared the table, but on his way to the ground, he scraped against it with his neck.
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That puzzled him. At the time, the table had seemed actually to grow a small projectile that shot out to meet the back of Remo's neck. But that was crazy, Remo reasoned. Tables didn't suddenly grow appendages that leaped out and attacked people.
He felt the spot toward the right of his spine, where he had grazed the table. Just a surface scratch, not even any blood.
"Are you all right?" he said to the professor, who was lying in a dazed sprawl beneath a row of Bunsen burners. "Let me . .."
He was going to say, "Let me help you up," but he realized with sudden clarity that he was having considerable difficulty helping himself up. The right side of his body felt heavy. The room swirled and dipped with each breath he took. When he tried to walk, his right leg felt about to buckle.
"Do you want me to call a doctor?" the professor asked, hovering over him.
Remo's triple vision presented him with six sagging breasts and three pot bellies. "Just put on your clothes," he said weakly.
Summoning up all his strength, he staggered from the software lab toward the Forty-First Street Inn.
"I'm sorry if I scared you, Mom," said Mr. Gordons, who was back in the form of Ralph Dickey. "I could not permit you to reveal my identity to that man."
"We have to have a little talk," the professor said. She sat him down and belted down a swig
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of gin. "Now, if you want to look like Ralph Dickey, that's okay with me. It's not the greatest face I can think of, but okay. But turning into an electric table that scares the living crap out of me and hurts the nice young man is going too far. And just when I had him interested in me, too."
"He's not hurt," Mr. Gordons said.
"How do you know? You were a table when it happened."
"I planted a small transmitter near his spinal column. It's just a scratch."
The professor was getting angry. "Then how come he was reeling around like a crazy man?"
"His reaction was most unusual. A normal human would not have felt the insertion at all. I knew there was something strange about him."
"Maybe you just got a case of butterfmgers. Why would you want to plant a transmitter on him, anyway? Can't you leave anything well enough alone?"
"You must believe me, Mom," Mr. Gordons said. "Something about this man is familiar to me. That is why it is imperative that you repair my memory banks. I do not know if he is helpful or dangerous. As long as he wears the transmitter, I can track his whereabouts, in case I have to kill him."
"Kill himl" the professor raged. "You Commie faggot shitheel, that was the best servicing I ever had."
"Mom!" ' ._.
Tm sorry. You just got on my nerves."
"Mothers aren't supposed to speak to their chil-
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dren thus. I was fed that information from a volume written by a Doctor Spock."
"So what?" She downed another mouthful of gin.
"Doctor Spock is the foremost world authority on child rearing, and he insists that good mothers do not refer to their offspring as Commie faggot shitheels."
"Okay, already. I lost my head."
"You don't love me," Mr. Gordons said.
"Oh, for Christ's sake. Look, I'm sorry."
"There is no need to feel sorry," Mr. Gordons sniffed. "I do not feel love. I am an android. I have no creativity, and no feelings. Knowing my mom doesn't love me is meaningless to one such as 1.1 can survive without love."
The professor looked at him guiltily. "Would it help if I told you a bedtime story?"
Mr. Gordons shrugged. "If you wish," he said.
She thought through all her favorite childhood reading matter. Then her face brightened. "Ever hear about the double helix formation of deoxyribose nucleic acid?" she asked enthusiastically.
"Everybody knows that one," Mr. Gordons pouted.
The professor thought for another moment. "Okay. How about optical methods for studying Herzian resonances in antiprotons? I won a Nobel for that."
Mr. Gordons's head sagged. "Your study was fed to my information banks in the early stages of my development, along with your findings in
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maser-laser principles used in quantum electrodynamics," he said.
"Smartass. Any other four-year-old kid would be happy with Herzian resonances."
Defiantly, Mr. Gordons looked up at her. "Since we're on the subject, you don't look like a mother, either."
"What do you mean," the professor balked, reaching for the gin decanter. "What's wrong with the way I look?"
"For one thing, you don't have any clothes on," Mr. Gordons said. -
"All right, all right," she said, wrapping a lab coat around herself.
"According to all standard Eastern and Western folklore, mothers are supposed to have gray hair and wrinkles," Mr. Gordons said. "They smile frequently. They're not supposed to drink gin and pull the pants off men they don't know."
The professor took a long draught from the decanter. "That's asking a lot, kid," she said.
Mr. Gordons rose, his face sad. "I will go elsewhere. I will find what I seek in another corner of the world."
"Wait a minute. I thought love meant nothing
to you."
"I seek to be creative. Therefore, I must simulate human behavior. I'm leaving home, Mom."
The professor sputtered out a stream of gin. "Don't do that," she said. "Every enemy agent in America will be out to get you. You're the LC-
111." "A creative human would not accept as a
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mother someone who behaves as you do. Goodbye ... individual."
"Mom. It's Mom, okay?" she said desperately. "Don't leave, Gordons. We'll track the entire Soviet space program. Discover new worlds in space. You'd like that, wouldn't you, sweetums?"
"Goodbye."
"Wait," she said, flailing her arms over her head. "Just hold on, okay? I'll be right back." She retrieved her handbag from its usual place in the wastepaper basket and dashed to the ladies' room.
There was a brief scream, followed by some loud scuffling and cursing. In a moment the professor was back in the lab.