Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty Read online

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-esca
pe? 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 thoughout 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 not
es 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.”