"I understand."
"He's toierant of alternate lifestyles, but I'm not sure how tolerant he'd be of me having one. Particularly one he'd never heard of or thought about."
"I'll call you, Alice."
"Good-bye."
She thought I didn't want anything for myself, the android thought as he hung up the phone. Somehow that made him sadder than anything.
His finger jabbed the coin slot again and dialed a California number. The phone rang twice before a recording announced the number had been disconnected. Cyndi had moved somewhere. Maybe, he thought, he'd call her agent later.
He dialed a New Haven number. "Hi, Kate," he said. "Oh." He heard someone inhaling a cigarette. When the voice came back, it was cheerful. " I always thought someone would put you back together."
Relief poured into him. "Someone did. For good this time, I hope."
A low chuckle. "It's hard to keep a good man down." The android thought about that for a moment. "Maybe I can see you," he said.
"I'm not coming to Manhattan. The bridges are closed anyway."
"Bridges closed?"
"Bridges closed. Martial law. Panic in the streets. You have been out of touch, haven't you?"
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 sautes 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…"