Aces High

UNTO THE SIXTH GENERATION

Part Two

A freezing jet stream battered at the city, flown straight from Siberia. It tore down the gaps between buildings, tugged at the halfhearted Christmas decorations the city had put up, scattered minuscule bits of Russian fallout in the streets. This was the coldest winter in years. The New Jersey/Pennsylvania Swarm had been officially declared dead two days ago, and the aces, marines, and army had returned to a parade down Fifth Avenue. In another few days, American troops and whatever aces could be persuaded to join them would be flying north and south to deal with the Swarm's invasions of Africa, Canada, and South America.

The android jabbed a newly-fleshed finger at the slot of a pay phone and felt something click. One simply had to understand these things. He dialed a number.

"Hello, Cyndi. How's the job search coming?"

"Mod Man! Hey… I just wanted to say… yesterday was wonderful. I never thought I'd be riding in a parade next to a war hero."

"I'm sorry it took so long for me to call you back."

"I guess fighting the Swarm was a kind of priority. Don't worry. You made up for lost time." She laughed. "Last night was amazing."

"Oh, no." The android was receiving another police call. "I'm afraid I've got to go."

"They're not invading again, are they?"

"No. I don't think so. I'll call you, okay?"

"I'll be looking forward."

Something resembling a mucous-green gelatinous mass had erupted from a manhole into the streets of Jokertown, a Swarm bud that had escaped the showdown across the Hudson. The bud succeeded in devouring two Christmas shoppers and a hot-pretzel vendor before the emergency was called in and the police radios began to call.

The android arrived first. As he dived into the canyon street he saw something that looked like a thirty-foot-wide bowl of gelatin that had been in the refrigerator far too long. In the gelatin were black currants that were its victims, which it was slowly digesting.

The android hovered over the creature and began firing his laser, trying to avoid the currants in hope they might prove revivable. The gelatin began to boil where the silent, invisible beam struck. The bud made a futile effort to reach his flying tormentor with a pseudopod, but failed. The creature began to roll in the direction of an alley, looking for escape. It was too hungry or too stupid to abandon its food and seek shelter in the sewers.

The creature squeezed into the alley and rushed down it. The android continued to fire. Bits were sizzling away and the thing seemed to be losing energy rapidly. Modular Man looked ahead and saw a bent figure ahead in the alley.

The figure was female and white, dressed in layers of clothing, all worn, all dirty. A floppy felt hat was pulled down over an ex-Navy watch cap. A pair of shopping bags drooped from her arms. Tangled gray hair hung over her forehead. She was rummaging in a dumpster, tossing crumpled newspapers over her shoulder into the alley. Modular Man increased his speed, firing radar-directed shots over his shoulder as he barreled through the cold drizzly air. He dropped to the pavement in front of the dumpster, his knees cushioning the impact.

"So I says to Maxine, I says…" the lady was saying. "Excuse me," said the android. He seized the woman and sped upward. Behind him, writhing under the barrage of coherent microwaves, the Swarm bud was evaporating.

"Maxine says, my mother broke her hip this morning, and you won't believe…" The old lady was flailing at him while she continued her monologue. He silently absorbed an elbow to his jaw and floated to a landing on the nearest roof. He let go his passenger. She turned to him flushed with anger.

"Okay, bunky," she said. "Time to see what Hildy's got in her bag."

"I'll fly you down later," Modular Man said. He was already turning to pursue the creature when, out of the corner ou his eye, he saw the lady opening her bag.

There was something black in there. The black thing was getting bigger.

The android tried to move, to fly away. Something had hold of him and wouldn't let him go.

Whatever was in the shopping bag was getting larger. It grew larger very quickly. Whatever had hold of the android was dragging him toward the shopping bag.

"Stop," he said simply. The thing wouldn't stop. The android tried to fight it, but his laser discharges had cost him a lot of power and he didn't seem to have the strength left.

The blackness grew until it enveloped him. He felt as if he were falling. Then he felt nothing at all.

New York's aces, responding to the emergency, finally conquered the Swarm bud. What was left of it, blobs of dark green, froze into lumps of dirty ice. Its victims, partially eaten, were identified by the non-edible credit cards and laminated ID they were carrying.

By nightfall, the hardened inhabitants of Jokertown were referring to the creature as the Amazing Colossal Snot Monster. None of them had noticed the bag lady as she came down the fire escape and wandered into the freezing streets.

The android awoke in a dumpster in an alley behind 52nd Street. Internal checks showed damage: his microwave laser had been bent into a sine wave; his flux monitor was wrecked; his flight module had been twisted as if by the hands of a giant. He flung back the dumpster lid with a bang. Carefully he looked up and down the alley.

There was no one in sight.

The god Amun glowed in Hubbard's mind. The ram's eyes blazed with anger, and the god held the ankh and staff with clenched fists.

"TIAMAT," he said, "has been defeated." Hubbard winced with the force of Amun's anger. "The Shakti device was not readied in time."

Hubbard shrugged. "The defeat was temporary," he said.

"The Dark Sister will return. She could be anywhere in the solar system-the military have no way of finding her or identifying her. We have not lived in secret all these centuries only to be defeated now."

The loft was quite neat compared to the earlier chaos. Travnicek's notes had been neatly assembled and classified, as far as possible, by subject. Travnicek had made a start at wading through them. It was hard going.

"So," Travnicek said. His breath was frosting in front of his face and condensing on his reading glasses. He took the spectacles off. "You were displaced about fifty city blocks spatially and moved one hour forward timewise, yes?"

"Apparently. When I came out of the dumpster I found that the fight in Jokertown had been over for almost an hour. Comparison with my internal clock showed a discrepancy of seventy-two minutes, fifteen point three three three seconds." The android had opened his chest and replaced some components. The laser was gone for good, but he had his flight capability back and he'd managed to jury-rig a flux monitor. "Interesting. You say the bag lady seemed not to be working with the blob thing?"

"Most likely it was a coincidence they were in the same street. Her monologue did not seem to be strickly rational. I don't think she is mentally sound."

Travnicek turned up the heater control on his jumpsuit. The temperature had dropped twelve degrees in two hours, and frost was forming on the skylights of the loft in midafternoon. Travnicek lit a Russian cigarette, turned on a hot plate to boil some water for coffee, and then put his hands in his warm jumpsuit pockets.

"I want to look in your memory," he said. "Open up your chest."

Modular Man obeyed. Travnicek took a pair of cables from a minicomputer stacked under an array of video equipment and jacked them into sockets in the android's chest, near his shielded machine brain. "Back up your memory onto the computer," he said. Flickering effects from the flux generator shone in Travnicek's intent eyes. The computer signaled the task complete. "Button up," Travnicek said. As the android removed the jacks and closed his chest, Travnicek turned on the video, then touched controls. A video picture began racing backward.

He reached the place where the bag lady appeared, and ran the image several times. He moved to a computer terminal and tapped instructions. The image of the bag lady's face filled the screen. The android looked at the woman's lined, grimy face, the straggling hair, the worn and tattered clothing. He noticed for the first time that she was missing some teeth. Travnicek stood and went back to his one-room living quarters in the back of the loft and came back with a battered Polaroid camera. He used the remaining three pictures and gave one to his creation.

"There. You can show it to people. Ask if they've seen her."

"Yes, sir."

Travnicek took thumbtacks and stuck the other two pictures to the low beams of the ceiling. "I want you to find out where the bag lady is and get what's in her bag. And I want you to find out where she got it." He shook his head, dripping cigarette ash on the floor, and muttered, "I don't think she invented it. I think she's just found this thing somewhere."

"Sir? The Swarm? We agreed that I would leave for Peru in two days."

"Fuck the military," Travnicek said. "They haven't paid us a dime for our services. Nothing but a lousy parade, and the military didn't pay for that, the city did. Let them see how easy it is to fight the Swarm without you. Then maybe they'll take us seriously." The truth was that Travnicek wasn't anywhere near being able to reconstruct his work. It would take weeks, perhaps even months. The military was demanding guarantees, plans, knowledge of his identity. The bag-lady problem was more interesting, anyway. He began idly spinning back through the android's memory.

Modular Man winced deep in his computer mind. He began talking quickly, hoping to distract his inventor from the pictures.

"As far as the bag lady goes, I could try the refugee centers, but it might take a long time. My files tell me there are normally twenty thousand homeless people in New York, and now there are an uncountable number of refugees from Jersey."

"Piss in a chalice!" exclaimed Travnicek, in Geiman. The android felt another wince coming on. Travnicek gaped at the television in surprise.

"You're screwing that actress lady!" he said. "That Cyndi What's-her-name!" The android resigned himself to what was about to come.

"That's correct;" he said.

"You're just a goddamn toaster," Travnicek said. "What the hell made you think you could fuck?"

"You gave me the equipment," the android said. "And you implanted emotions in me. And on top of that, you made me good-looking."

"Huh." Travnicek turned his eyes from Modular Man to the video and back again. "I gave you the equipment so you could pass as a human if you had to. And I just gave you the emotions so you could understand the enemies of society. I didn't think you'd do anything." He tossed his cigarette butt to the floor. A leer crossed his face. "Was it fun?" he asked. "It was pleasant, yes."

"Your blond chippie seemed to be having a good time." Travnicek cackled and reached for the controls. " I want to start this party at the beginning."

"Didn't you want to look at the bag lady again?"

"First things first. Get me an Urquell." He looked up as a thought occurred to him. "Do we have any popcorn?"

"No!" The android tossed his abrupt answer over his shoulder.

Modular Man brought the beer and watched while Travnicek had his first sip. The Czech looked up in annoyance. "I don't like the way you're looking at me," he said. The android considered this. "Would you prefer me to look at you some other way?" he asked.

Travnicek turned red. "Go stand in the corner, microwave-oven-that-fucks!" he bellowed. "Turn your goddamn head away, video-unit-that-fucks!"

For the rest of the afternoon, while his creation stood in a corner of the loft, Travnicek watched the video. He enjoyed himself enormously. He watched the best parts several times, cackling at what he saw. Then, slowly, his laughter dimmed. A cold, uncertain feeling crept up the back of his neck. He began casting glances at the stolid figure of the android. He turned off the vid unit, dropped his cigarette butt in the Urquell bottle, then lit another.

The android was showing a surprising degree of independence. Travnicek reviewed elements of his programming, concentrating on the ETCETERA file. Travnicek's abstract of human emotion had been gleaned from a variety of expert sources ranging from Freud to Dr. Spock. It had been an intellectual challenge for Travnicek to do the programmingtransforming the illogicalities of human behavior into the cold rhetoric of a program. He'd performed the task during his second year at Texas A amp;M, when he'd barely gone out of his quarters the whole year and had known he had to set himself a large task in order to keep from being driven crazy by the lunatic environment of a university that seemed an embodiment of the collective unconscious fantasies of Stonewall Jackson and Albert Speer. He'd barely been at A amp;M for ten minutes before he'd known it was a mistake the crop-haired undergraduates with their uniforms, boots, and sabers reminded him too much of the SS who had left Travnicek barely alive beneath the bodies of his family' at Lidice, not to mention the Soviet and Czech security forces that had followed the Germans. Travnicek knew if he was going to survive in Texas, he had to find something massive to work on lest his memories eat him alive.

Travnicek had never been particularly interested in human psychology as such-passion, he had long ago decided, was not only foolish but genuinely boring, a waste of time. But putting passion into a program, yes, that was interesting.

He could barely remember that period now. How many months had he spent in his creative trance, a channel for his own deepest spirit? What had he wrought during that time? What the hell was in ETCETERA?

For a moment a tremor of fear went through Travnicek. The ghost of Victor Frankenstein's creation loomed for a moment in his mind. Was a rebellion on the part of the android possible? Could he evolve hostile passions against his creator? But no-there were overriding imperatives that Travnicek had hardwired into the system. Modular Man could not evolve away his prime directives as long as his computer consciousness was physically intact, any more than a human could, unassisted, evolve away his genetic makeup in a single lifetime.

Travnicek began to feel a growing comfort. He looked at the android with a kind of admiration. He felt pride that he'd programmed such a fast learner.

"You're not bad, toaster," he said finally, turning off the video. "Reminds me of myself in the old days." He raised an admonishing finger. "But no screwing tonight. Go find me the bag lady."

Modular Man's voice was muffed as he stood with his face to the wall. "Yes, sir," he said.

Neon cast its glow upon the frosted breath of the nat gang members standing beneath the pastel sign that marked the Run Run Club. Detective Third Grade John F X. Black, driving his unmarked unit and waiting for the light to change so he could make a turn onto Schiff Parkway, automatically ran his eyes over the crowd, registering faces, names, possibilities… He had just gotten of duty, and had signed out an unmarked car because he was due to spend the next day freezing his ass of at a plant, what on TV they'd call a stakeout. Ricky Santillanes, a petty thief out on bond since yesterday, grinned at Black with a mouthful of steel-capped teeth and gave Black the finger. Let him get his rocks of, Black thought. The nat gangs were being trashed by the Demon Princes of Jokertown every time they met.

Black observed from a poster that the band playing tonight was called the Swarm Mother-no one could say hardcore groups were slow in their perception of the zeitgeist. It was pure chance that Black happened to be looking at the poster at the moment Officer Frank Carroll staggered into the light. Carroll looked wild-he had his cap in his hand, his hair was mussed, and his overcoat was splattered with something that glowed a fluorescent chrome yellow under the glimmering sign. He looked as if he were making for the cop shop a couple blocks away. The nats laughed as they made way for him. Black knew that Carroll's assigned sector was blocks away and didn't take him anywhere near this corner.

Carroll had been on the force for two years, joining just out of high school. He was a white man with dark red hair, a clipped mustache, medium build beefed slightly by irregular weight training. He seemed serious about police work, was diligent and methodical, and worked a lot of overtime he didn't have to. Black had pegged him as being dedicated but unimaginative. He wasn't the kind to run about wild-eyed at twelve o'clock on a winter night.

Black opened his door, stood, and called Carroll's name. The officer turned, glaring wildly, and then an expression of relief came onto his face. He ran for Black's car and jerked at the passenger door as Black unlocked it.

"Jesus Christ!" Carroll said. "I just got thrown in a trash heap by a bag lady!"

Black smiled inwardly. The traffic light had changed, and Black made his turn. "She catch you by surprise?" he asked. "Damn right. She was down in an alley off Forsyth. She had a book of matches and a bunch of wadded-up paper, and was trying to set a whole dumpster on fire to keep warm. I told her to quit, and I was trying to get her into my unit so I could take her to the shelter down in Rutger Park. And then wham! The bag got me." He looked at Black and gnawed his lip. "You think she could have been some kind of joker, Lou?"

"Lou" was NYPD for lieutenant.

"What do you mean? She hit you with the bag, right?"

"No. I mean the bag-" The wild look was in Carroll's eyes again. "The bag ate me, Lou. Something reached right up out of the bag and swallowed me. It was…" He groped for words. "Definitely paranormal." He glanced down at his uniform. "Look at this, Lou." His shield had been twisted in a strange way, like a timepiece in a Dali print. So had two of his buttons. He touched them in a kind of awe.

Black pulled into a loading zone and set the parking brake. "Tell me about this."

Carroll looked confused. He rubbed his forehead. "I felt something grab me, Lou. And then… I got sucked right into the bag. I saw the bag just getting bigger and… and the next thing I knew I was in this trash heap of Ludlow north of Stanton. I was running for the cop shop when you stopped me."

"You were teleported from Forsyth to Ludlow north of Stanton."

"Teleported. Yeah. That's the word." Carroll looked relieved. "You believe me, then. Jesus, Lou, I thought I'd get written up for sure."

"I've been in Jokertown a long time, seen a lot of strange things." Black put the car in gear again. "Let's go find your bag lady," he said. "This was just a few minutes ago, right?"

"Yeah. And my unit's still up there. Shit. The jokers've probably stripped it by now."

The glow from the burning dumpster, orange on the brownstone alley walls, was visible from Forsyth. Black pulled into a loading zone. "Let's go on foot."

"Don't you think we should call the fire department?"

"Not yet. It might not be safe for them."

Black in the lead, they walked to the end of the alley. The dumpster was burning bright, the flames shooting up fifteen feet or more amid a cloud of rising ashes. Carroll's unit was magically untouched, even with its rear door open. Standing in front of the dumpster, shifting from one foot to the other, was a small white woman with a full shopping bag in each hand. She wore several layers of shabby clothing. She seemed to be muttering to herself.

"That's her, Lieutenant!"

Black contemplated the woman and said nothing. He wondered how to approach her.

The flames gushed up higher, snapping, and suddenly strange bright flickering lights, like Saint Elmo's fire, played about the woman and her bags. Then something in one bag seemed to rise up, a dark shadow, and the fire bent like a candle flame in a strong wind and was sucked into the bag. In an instant fire and shadow were gone. The strange colored lights played gently about the woman's form. Greasy ashes drifted to the pavement.

"Holy shit," murmured Carroll. Black reached a decision. He dug into his pocket and got his billfold and the keys to his unmarked unit. He gave Carroll a ten.

"Take my unit. Go to the Burger King on West Broadway and get two double cheeseburgers, two big fries, and a jumbo cofee to go." Carroll stared at him.

"Regular or black, Lou?"

"Move!" Black snapped. Carroll took of.

It took both burgers, the coffee, and one set of fries to lure the bag lady into Black's unmarked car. Black thought she probably would never have gotten into a blue-and-white like Carroll's. He'd had Carroll lock his uniform coat and weapon in the trunk so as not to alarm the woman, and Carroll was shivering as he got in the passenger seat.

Behind, the bag lady was mumbling to herself and devouring fries. She smelled terrible.

"Where to now?" -Carroll asked. "One of the refugee centers? The clinic?"

Black put the car into gear. "Someplace special. Uptown. There are things about this woman you don't know." Carroll put most of his energy into shivering as Black sped out of Jokertown. The bag lady went to sleep in the back seat. Her snores whistled through missing teeth. Black pulled up in front of a brownstone on East 57th.

"Wait here," he said. He went down the stairs to a basement apartment entrance and pressed the buzzer. A plastic Christmas wreath was on the front door. Someone looked out through a spyhole in the door. The door opened. "I wasn't expecting you," said Coleman Hubbard.

"I've got someone with… powers… in the back seat. She's not in her right mind. I thought we could put her in the back bedroom. And there's an officer with me who can't know what's going on."

Hubbard's eyes flicked to the car. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him to stay in the car. He's a good boy, and that's what he'll do."

"Okay. Let me get my coat."

While Carroll watched curiously, Hubbard and Black coaxed the bag lady into Hubbard's apartment, using the food from Hubbard's refrigerator. Black wondered what Carroll would say if he could see the decor in the special locked apartment next door, the dark soundproofed room with its candles, its altar, the pentagram painted on the floor, the inlaid alloy gutters, the bright chains fixed to staples… It wasn't as elaborate as the temple the Order had downtown before it blew up, but then it was only a temporary headquarters anyway, until the new temple uptown could be finished.

In Hubbard's apartment there were two rooms ready for guests, and the bag lady was put into one of these.

_"Put a lock on the door," Black said. "And call the Astronomer."

"Lord Amun has already been called," Hubbard said, and tapped his head.

Black returned to his car and started driving back to Jokertown again. "We'll get your unit," Black said. "Then we'll get you to the cop shop for your report."

Carroll looked at him. "Who was that guy, Lieutenant?"

"A specialist in mental cases and jokers."

"That lady might do him some harm."

"He'll be safer than either of us."

Black pulled up behind Carroll's cruiser. He got out and opened the trunk, taking out Carroll's coat and hat. He gave them to the young officer. Then he took out a flute-NYPD for an innocent-looking soda bottle filled with liquor-which he'd been planning on using to keep himself warm during the plant tomorrow. He offered the flute to Carroll. The patrolman took the bottle gratefully. Black reached for Carroll's gunbelt.

"It was lucky you were around, Lou."

"Yeah. It sure was."

Black shot Carroll four times in the chest with his own gun, then, after the officer was on the ground, shot him twice more in the head. He wiped his prints off the gun and tossed it to the ground, then took the Coke bottle and got back in his car. Maybe, with the spilled rum, it would look as if Carroll had stopped to hassle a wino and the drunk had gotten the drop on him.

The car smelled like cheeseburgers. Black was reminded he hadn't had supper.

The bag lady had ignored the bed and gone to sleep in a corner of the room. Her bags were piled in front and atop her like a bulwark. Hubbard sat on a stool, watching her intently.

His crooked smile had frozen into an unpleasant parody of itself. Pain throbbed in his brain. The effort of reading her, mind was costing him.

No turning back, he thought. He had to see this through. His failure with Captain McPherson had cost him in the Order and in Amun's esteem; and when Black had shown up with the bag lady, Hubbard realized this was the chance to win back his place. Hubbard had lied to Black when he told the detective he had alerted Amun.

There was power here. Perhaps enough to power the Shakti device. And if the Shakti device were powered by the bag thing, then Amun was no longer necessary.

The bag thing could eat people, Hubbard knew. Perhaps it could eat even Amun. Hubbard thought of the fire at the old temple, Amun striding through the flames with his disciples at his back, ignoring Hubbard's screams.

Yes, Hubbard thought. This would be worth the risk. Detective Second Grade Harry Matthias, known in the Order as Judas, sat on the bed, his chin in his hands. He shrugged.

"She's not an ace. Neither is whatever she's got in the bag."

Hubbard spoke to him mentally. I sense two minds. One is hers-it is disordered. I can't touch it. The other is in the bag-it's in touch with her, somehow.. there's an empathic binding. The other mind also seems to be damaged. 16 as if it's adapted to her.

Judas stood. He was flushed with anger. "Why in God's name don't we just take the damn bag?" He went for the bag lady with his hands clawed.

Hubbard felt an electric snap of awareness in his mind. The bag lady was awake. Through his mental link with Judas he felt the man hesitate at the sudden malevolence in the old woman's eyes. Judas reached for the bag.

The bag reached for Judas.

A blackness faster than thought rose into the room. Judas vanished into it. Hubbard stared at the empty space. In his mind, the woman's honed madness danced.

Judas shivered and his lips were blue. Christmas tinsel hung in his hair. A piece of sticky cardboard was stuck to the bottom of one shoe. His gun had been twisted into a sine wave. He shivered and his lips were blue. He'd been transported to a dumpster on Christopher Street and had ceased to exist for about twenty minutes. He'd taken a cab back.

Power, Hubbard thought. Incredible power. The bag thing warps space-time somehow.

"Why garbage?" Judas said. "Why shitpiles? And look at my gun.. . " He became aware of the cardboard, and tried to pull it off his shoe. It came free with a sticky noise.

"She's fixated on garbage, I guess," Hubbard said. "And it seems to twist inanimated objects, sometimes. I could sense that it's broken-maybe that's a problem with it."

He had to figure out some way to subdue the bag lady. Waiting till she'd gone to sleep didn't work-she'd woken up at the first threatening move from Judas. He wondered vaguely about poison gas, and then an idea struck him.

"Do you have access to a tranquilizer gun at the precinct house?"

Judas shook his head. "No. I think maybe the fire department has some, in case they have to deal with escaped animals."

The idea crystallized in Hubbard's mind. "I want you and Black to steal me one."

He'd have Black actually do the shooting-if the bag thing retaliated, it would attack Black. And then with the bag lady put to sleep, Hubbard would take the device…

And then it would be Hubbard's turn. He could take all the time he needed, playing with the bag lady's mind, and she would have enough in her brain left to know what was happening to her. Oh, yes.

He could test the power of the captured device on people he grabbed right off the street. And after that, maybe it would be Amuns turn.

He licked his lips. He could hardly wait.

The legions of the night seemed endless in number. The android's abstract knowledge of the New York underclass, the fact that there were thousands of people who drifted among the glass towers and solid brownstones in an existence almost as remote from the buildings' inhabitants as that of denizens of Mars… The abstract, digitized facts were not, somehow, adequate to describe the reality, the clusters of men who passed bottles around ash-can fires, the dispossessed whose eyes reflected flashing Christmas lights while they lived behind walls of cardboard, the insane who hugged themselves in alleyways or subway entrances, chanting the litany of the mad. It was as if a spell of evil had fallen on the city, that part of the population had been subjected to war or devastation, made homeless refugees, while the others had been enchanted so as not to see them.

The android found two dead, the last of their warmth gone from them. He left these in their newspaper coffins and went on. He found others who were dying or ill and took them to hospitals. Others ran from him. Some pretended to gaze at the bag lady's picture, cocking the Polaroid up to look at the picture in the light of a trash-can fire, and then asked for money in return for relating a sighting that was obviously false. The task, he thought, was almost hopeless.

He kept on.

Black and Hubbard waited outside the bag lady's locked room. Black was sucking on his rum-and-Coke flute. "Dreams, man. Incredible dreams. Jesus. Monsters like you wouldn't believelion bodies, human faces, eagle wings, every damn thing you could think of-and they were all hungry, and they all wanted to eat me. And then there was this giant thing behind them, just a shadow, like, and then… Jesus." He gave a nervous grin and wiped his forehead. "I. still break out into a sweat thinking about it. And then I realized that all the monsters were connected somehow, that they were all a part of this thing. That's when I'd wake up screaming. It happened over and over again. I was almost ready to see the department shrinks."

"Your dreaming mind had touched TIAMAT"

"Yeah. That's what Matthias-Judas-told me when he recruited me. Somehow he sensed TIAMAT was getting to me."

Hubbard grinned his crooked grin. Black still didn't know that Revenant had entered Black's mind every night, putting the dreams into his mind, had made him wake screaming night after night, and driven him almost to the brink of psychosis so that when Judas explained what had happened to him and how the Order could make the dreams go away, the Masons would seem the only possible answer. All because the Order needed someone higher in the NYPD than Matthias, and Black was a stand-up cop who was marked for advancement..

"And then I got blackballed." The detective shook his head. "Balsam and the others, the old-line Masons, didn't want a guy who'd been raised Catholic. Motherfuckers. And TIAMAT was already on its way. I still can't believe it."

"Being named after Francis Xavier didn't help, I suppose."

"At least they never found out my sister's a nun. That would have trashed me for sure." He finished the flute and walked toward the living room to toss the bottle in the trash. "And I got in on the second try."

You'll never know why, Hubbard thought. You'll never know that Amun was using your membership as a tool against Balsam, that he wanted the former Master, with his irrational prejudices and old man's ways and inherited mystical mumbo jumbo, out of the way entirely. How he used the decision against Black to convince Kim Toy, Red, and Revenant that Balsam had to go. And then there was the fire at the old temple, stage-managed by Amun somehow, and Amun had saved his own people from the flames, and Balsam and all his followers had died.

Hubbard remembered the explosion, the fire, the pain, the way his flesh blackened in the blowtorch flame. He'd screamed for help, seeing the giant astral figure of Amun leading his own disciples out, and if Kim Toy hadn't insisted on going back for him he would have died then and there. Amun hadn't trusted him fully, not then. Hubbard had just joined the Order, and Amun hadn't had the chance to play with him yet, to enter into his brain and make him cringe, to play the endless mind games and twist him into knots with a long series of humiliations.. . Yes, he thought, that's what Amun is like. I know, because I'm that way too.

There was a knock on the door. Hubbard admitted Judas, who was carrying the stolen tranquilizer gun in its red metal case with its OFFICIAL USE ONLY stickers. "Whew. What a bitch. I thought Captain McPherson would never let me outta there."

He and Black took the large black air pistol from the case, then put a dart in the chamber. "It should put her out for hours," Black said confidently. "I'll give her some food, then shoot her from the door when she's eating." He tucked the pistol into the back waistband of his trousers, took a paper plate of cold pizza from the refrigerator, and walked to the bag lady's door. He unlocked the heavy padlock and cautiously opened the door. Hubbard and Matthias unconsciously took a step back, half-expecting Black to vanish into whatever spacetime singularity inhabited the bag… but Black's expression changed, and he poked his head into the room, glanced right and left. When he stepped back into the hallway, his expression was baffled.

"She's gone," he said. "She's not in the room anywhere."

Modular Man looked at the drinks lined up in the bar before him. Irish coffee, martini, margarita, boilermaker, Napoleon brandy. He seriously wanted to try new tastes right now, and wondered if getting his parts crushed by the bag lady's gizmo had wakened in him a sense of mortality.

"I am beginning to realize," said the android raising the Irish coffee to his lips, "that my creator is a hopeless sociopath. "

Cyndi considered this. "if you don't mind some theology, I think that this just puts you in the same boat with the rest of us."

"He's beginning to-well, never mind what he's beginning to do. But I think the man is sick." The android wiped cream from his upper lip.

"You could run away. Last I heard, slavery was illegal. He's not even paying you minimum wage, I suppose."

"I'm not a person. I'm not human. Machines do not have rights."

"That doesn't mean you have to do everything he says, Mod Man."

The android shook his head. "It won't work. I have hardwired inhibitions against disobeying him, disobeying his instructions, or revealing his identity in any way."

Cyndi seemed startled. "He's thorough, I'll hand that to him." She looked at Modular Man carefully. "Why'd he build you, anyway?"

"He was going to mass-market me and sell me to the military. But I think he's having so much fun playing with me that he may never get around to selling my rights to the Pentagon."

"I'd be thankful for that if I were you."

"I wouldn't know." The android reached for another drink, then showed Cyndi the Polaroid of the bag lady.

"I need to find this person."

"She looks like a bag lady."

"She is a bag lady."

She laughed. "Haven't you been listening to the broadcasts? You know how many thousands of those women there are in this town? There's a recession going on out there. Winos, runaways, people out of a job or out of luck, people who got kicked out of mental institutions because of state cutbacks on funding… The shelters give Swarm refugees precedence over street people. Jesus-and on a night like this, too. You know it's already the coldest night in history for December? They've had to open up churches, police stationsall sorts of places so the vagrants won't freeze to death. And a lot of the vagrants won't go to any kind of shelter, because they're too scared of the authorities or because they're just too crazy to realize they're gonna need help. I don't envy you, Mod Man, not at all. The dumpsters'll be full of dead people tomorrow."

"I know. I found some."

"You want to find her before she freezes to death, try the trash-can fires first, the shelters later." She frowned at the picture again. "Why are you trying to find her, anyway?"

"I think… she may be a witness to something."

"Right. Well. Good luck, then."

The android glanced over his shoulder at the patio observation deck with its glistening skin of ice. Beyond the rail Manhattan gleamed at him coldly, with a clarity that he hadn't before seen, as if the buildings, the people, the lights, had all been frozen inside a vast crystal. It was as though the city were no closer than the stars, and as incapable as they of giving warmth.

Inside his mind, the android performed a purely mental shudder. He wanted to stay here in the warmth of the Aces High, going through thefor him-perfectly abstract motions of raising a warm drink to his lips. There was something comforting' in it, in spite of the logical pointlessness of the act. He did not entirely understand the impulse, only knew it for a fact. The human part of his programming, presumably.

But there were restrictions placed on his desires, and one of those was obedience. He could stay at the Aces High only so long as it could help him in his mission of finding the bag lady.

He finished the row of drinks and said good-bye to Cyndi. Unless a mircle happened and he found the bag lady soon, he'd be spending the rest of the night on the streets.

Four A.M. The car ran over a manhole, and hot coffee spilled on Coleman Hubbard's thigh. He ignored it. He raised the big styrofoam cup from between his thighs and drank urgently. He had to stay awake.

He was looking for the bag lady, going through every shelter, driving down every dark street, casting out with his mind, hoping to find the pattern of lunacy and anger that he had seen in her disturbed brain.

He'd been doing this for the better part of twenty-four hours. The heater in his cheap rented heap had given out. His body was a mass of cramps and his skull was pounding to a slow piledriver rhythm. The fact that Black and Judas were freezing themselves on the same errand was no consolation. Hubbard jammed the coffee cup between his thighs, turned on his map light, and glanced at the paper for the list of shelters. There was a girls' school gymnasium filled with refugees nearby, and he hadn't sensed it yet.

As he approached the place, Hubbard began to feel a disturbing familiarity, something like deja vu. His headache battered at his eyes. His stomach felt queasy. It was a few seconds before he recognized the sensation.

She was here. Elation seized him. He wrenched his mind away from the twisted patterns of the bag lady's mind and reached out to where Black patrolled, the loaded dart gun on the seat next to him.

Hurry! he cried. I've found her!

Modular Man walked down the long rows, scanning left and right. Eight hundred refugees had been crammed into the prep school gym. There were cots for about half, apparently acquired from some National Guard depot, and the remaining refugees were sleeping on the floor. The big room echoed to the sound of snores, cries, the wail of children.

And there she was. Walking among the rows of cots, mumbling to herself, dragging her heavy bags. She looked up at the same moment that the android saw her, and there was a mutual shock of recognition, a snaggletoothed, malevolent grin.

The android was airborne in a picosecond of his lightspeed thought. He wanted to be clear of any innocent bystanders if she was going to unleash whatever she had in her bag. He had barely left the floor before his flux-force field snapped on, crackling around his body. The bag-thing was not going to be able to seize anything solid.

Radar quested out, the gas-grenade launcher on his left shoulder whirred as it aimed. His shoulder absorbed the recoil. The grenade became substantial as soon as it left the flux-field but kept its momentum. Opaque gas billowed up around the bag lady.

She smiled to herself. A blackness snapped into existence around her, and the gas drowned in it, drawn into her bag like a waterspout.

Panic roared among the refugees as they awoke to the battle.

The bag lady opened her shopping bag. The android could see the blackness lying there. He felt something cold pass through him, something that tried to tug at his insubstantial frame. The steel girders supporting the ceiling rang like chimes above his head.

The bag lady's crooked smile died. "Sonofabitch," she said. "You remind me of Shaun."

Modular Man crested his flight near the ceiling. He was going to dive at her, turn substantial at the last second, make a grab for the shopping bag, and hope it didn't eat him.

The bag lady began grinning again. As the android reached his pushover point just above her, she pulled the shopping bag over her head.

It swallowed her. Her head disappeared into it, followed by the rest of her body. Her hands, clutching the end of the bag, pulled the bag after her into the void. The bag folded into itself and vanished.

"That's impossible," somebody said.

The android searched the room carefully. The bag lady was not to be found.

Ignoring the growing disturbance below, he drifted upward, through the ceiling. The cold lights of Manhattan appeared around him. He rose alone into the night.

Hubbard gazed for a long, endless moment at the space where the bag lady had been. So that's how she did it, he thought.

He rubbed his frozen hands together and thought of the streets, the endless freezing streets, the long cold hours of his search. The bag lady might have gone to Jersey, for all he knew.

It was going to be a long night.

"Goddamn the woman!" Travnicek said. His hand, which was holding a letter, trembled with rage. "I've been evicted!" He brandished the letter. "Disturbances!" he muttered. "Unsafe equipment! Sixty fucking days!" He began to stomp on the floor with his heavy boots, trying deliberately to rattle the apartment below. Breath frosted from his every word. "The bitch!" he bellowed. " I know her game! She just wanted me to fix the place up at my own expense so she could evict me and then charge higher rent. I didn't spend a fortune in improvements, so now she wants to find another chump. Some member of the fucking gentrifying class." He looked up at the android, patiently waiting with a carryout bag of hot croissants and coffee.

"I want you to get into her office tonight and trash the place," Travnicek said. "Leave nothing intact, not a piece of paper, not a chair. I want only mangled furniture and confetti. And when she's cleaning that up, do the same to her apartment. "

"Yes, sir," the android said. Resigned to it.

"The Lower East Fucking Side," Travnicek said. "What's left, if this neighborhood's starting to get pretensions? I'm gonna have to move into Jokertown to get any peace." He took his coffee from the android's hand while he continued stomping the pressboard floor.

He looked over his shoulder at his creation. "Well?" he barked. "Are you looking for the bag lady or what?"

"Yes, sir. But since the gas launcher didn't work, I thought I'd change to the dazzler."

Travnicek jumped up and down several times. The sound echoed through the loft. "Whatever you want." He stopped his jumping up and down, and smiled. "Okay," he said. " I know what to do. I'll turn on the big generators!"

The android put the paper bag down on a workbench, swapped weapons, and flew soundlessly up through the ceiling. Outside, the cold wind continued to batter the city, flooding between the tall buildings, blowing the people like straws in the water. The temperature had risen barely above freezing, but the wind chill was dropping the effective temperature to below zero.

More people, the android knew, were going to die.

"Hey," Cyndi said. "How about we take a break?"

"If you like."

Cyndi raised her hands, cupped the android's head between them. "All that exertion," she said. "Don't you even sweat a little bit?"

"No. I just turn on my cooling units."

"Amazing." The android slid off her. "Doing it with a machine," she said thoughtfully. "You know, I would have thought it would be at least a little kinky. But it's not."

"Nice of you to say so. I think."

Modular Man had been looking for the bag lady for fortyeight hours, and had concluded he needed a few hours to himself. He justified this stop as being necessary for his morale. He was planning to move the body of the evening's memory from its sequential place to somewhere else, and fill the empty space with a boring rerun of the previous night's patrol for the bag lady. With any luck, Travnicek would just speed through the patrol and wouldn't go looking for memory porn.

She sat up in the bed, reaching for the night table. "Want some coke?"

"It's wasted on me. Go ahead." She set the mirror carefully in front of her and began chopping white powder. The android watched as she snorted a pair of lines and leaned back against the pillows with a smile. She looked at him and took his hand.

"You really don't have to be so hung up on performance, you know," she said. "I mean, you could have finished if you'd wanted."

"I don't finish."

Her look was a little glassy. "What?" she said.

" I don't finish. Orgasm is a complex random firing of neurons. I don't have neurons, and nothing I do is truly random. It wouldn't work."

"Holy fuck." Cyndi blinked at him. "So what does it feel like?"

"Pleasant. In a very complicated way."

She cocked her head and thought about this for a moment. "That's about right," she concluded. She snorted another pair of lines and looked at him brightly.

"I got a job," she said. "That's how I was able to afford the coke. A Christmas present for myself." He smiled. "Congratulations."

"It's in California. A commercial. I'm in the hand of this giant ape, see, and I'm rescued by Bud Man. You know, the guy in the beer ads. And then at the end-" She rolled her eyes. "At the end we're all happily drunk, Bud Man, the ape, and me, and I ask the ape how he's doing, and the ape belches." She frowned. "It's kind of gross."

"I was about to say."

"But then there's a chance for a guest shot on TwentyDollar Hotel. I get to have an affair with a mobster or something. My agent wasn't too clear about it." She giggled.

"At least there aren't any giant apes in that one. I mean, one was enough."

"I'll miss you," the android said. He wasn't at all sure how he felt about this. Or, for that matter, if what he felt could in any way be described as feeling. Cyndi sensed his thoughts. "You'll get to rescue other nice ladies."

"I suppose. None nicer than you, though."

She laughed some more. "You have a way with a compliment," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

She patted him on his dome. "It'll be a week or so before I have to leave. We can spend some time together."

"I'd like that." The android was considering his yearning for experience, the strange fashion his career had of providing it, the way it seemed to him that the experience provided was not enough, would never prove enough.

Infrared detectors snapped on and off in the android's plastic eyes as he floated over the street. Gusts of wind tried to lash him into buildings. Except for the few hours he'd spent with Cyndi, he'd been doing this nonstop for four days. Below in the street, someone tossed a styrofoam cup out the window of a blue Dodge. Modular Man wondered where he'd seen that particular action before.

Macroatomic switches performed a silent superliminal sifting of data. And the android realized he'd been seeing that blue Dodge a lot, and in many of the same places Modular Man had been in the last few days-refugee centers, shelters, a ceaseless midnight patrolling of the streets. Whoever was in the Dodge was looking for someone. The android wondered if the Dodge was looking for the bag lady. Modular Man decided to keep the Dodge under observation.

The car's search was slower than the androids-so Modular Man began scissoring, searching streets left and right of the car while returning to the Dodge every so often. At the Jokertown Salvation Army center he got a good look at the Dodge's occupant-a middle-aged white man, his crooked face drawn and harried. He memorized the car's license plate and rose into the sky again.

And then, hours later, there she was-dead ahead of the Dodge, huddled beside someone's front stoop with her bags piled on top of her. The android settled onto a rooftop and waited. The Dodge was slowing down.

"And Shaun says to me, he says, I want you to see this doctor.."

Hubbard hunched into his overcoat. It felt as if the wind were blowing through his body, traveling right through flesh and bone. His teeth were chattering. He had been driving for what seemed years before, once again, getting that awful, nauseating feeling of deja vu. He'd found her again, crouched behind someone's stoop behind a rampart of shopping bags.

"There ain't nothing wrong with your mother that a shot of the Irish couldn't fix.. "

Black. I have found her again. Lower West Side. Black's answer was sardonic. Are you certain nothing's going to go wrong this time?

The robot isn't here. I will stay out of sight. Ten minutes.

Bring food, Hubbard said. We'll try to catch her unawares.

"Fuck you, Shaun, I says. Fuck you." The bag lady had jumped to her feet, was shaking her fist at the sky. Hubbard looked at her. "I'm with you, lady," he mumbled. And then he looked up. "Oh, shit," he said.

Modular Man floated off the rooftop. He couldn't tell whether the bag lady was screaming at him or at the sky in general. The occupant of the Dodge was several houses away, sheltered behind another front stoop. It didn't look as if the man intended any action.

He thought about the way she had twisted his components, of the obliteration of existence that would happen if she ripped into his generators or brain. Memories rose to his mind; the snap of single-malt in his nose, the fat man with his rifle, Cyndi moaning softly in his arms, the ape's foaming snarl… He didn't want to lose any of it.

"Oh, shit," Hubbard said, staring up in horror. The android was floating forty feet over the bag lady. She was screaming at him, reaching into her bag. The thing in the bag hadn't been able to snatch him last time.

In sudden fury, Hubbard reached out with his mind. He would take command of the android, smash him into the pavement over and over until he was nothing but shattered components…

His mind touched the android's cold macroatomic brain. Fire blossomed in Hubbard's consciousness. He began to scream.

There was something black in the bag lady's shopping bag. It was growing.

The android dove straight for it. His arms were thrown out wide. If the woman moved her bag at the last minute, things would get very messy.

The blackness grew. The wind was tugging at him, trying to spin him off course, but the android corrected.

As he struck the blackness of the portal, he felt again the obliterating nullity overcome him. But before he lost track of himself, he felt his hands closing on the edges of the shopping bag, clamping on them, not letting go.

For a small fraction of a second he felt satisfaction. Then, as expected, he felt nothing at all.

The Siberian winds had not chilled the warm air over the municipal landfill near St. Petersburg, Florida. The place smelled awful. Modular Man had lost almost four hours this time. His checks showed no internal damage. He was lucky. He stood amid the reeking garbage and rummaged through the shopping bag. Rags, bits of clothing, bits of food, and then the thing, whatever it was. A black sphere about two kilos in weight, the size of a bowling ball. There were no obvious switches or means of controlling it.

It was warm to the touch. Clasping it to his chest, the android rose into the balmy sky.

"Nice," Travnicek said. "You did good, toaster. I pat myself on the back for a great job of programming."

The android brought him a cup of coffee. Travnicek grinned, sipped, and turned to contemplate the alien orb sitting on his workbench. He'd been trying to manipulate it with various kinds of remotes but had been unable to achieve anything.

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. "

Warmth filled him, even, here in the Siberian jet stream. He was airborne in a fraction of a second.

Down the alley, something bright caught the eye of the bag lady. She bent and picked up a strand of red ribbon. She stuffed it into a bag and walked on.