"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 notes 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."
"Ghost-free light-cone gauge… Lorentz invariance is valid…"
"I've informed Tachyon," said Finn. He was a pony-size centaur, his human half wearing a white lab coat and stethoscope. He looked at Travnicek, then at the android. "Can you assume responsibility for this man, should we decide to give him the serum? Are you family?"
"I can't sign legal documents. I'm not a person, I'm a sixth-generation machine intelligence."
Finn absorbed this. "We'll wait for Tachyon," he decided. The plastic curtains parted. The alien's violet eyes widened in surprise. "You're back," he said. Modular Man realized this was the first time he'd ever heard Tachyon use a contraction. Tachyon was dressed in a white lab coat over which he wore a hussar jacket with enough gold lace to outfit the Ruritanian Royal Guard. Over it was strapped a Colt Python on a black gunbelt with silver-and-turquoise conchos. "You're carrying a six-gun," Modular Man said.
Tachyon recovered quickly from his surprise. He waved his hand carelessly. "There has been… harassment. We are coping, however, I am pleased to see you have been reassembled."
"Thank you. I've brought in a patient."
Tachyon took the printouts from the centaur and began glancing through them. "This is the first appearance of the wild card in three days," he remarked. "If we can discover where the patient was infected, we might be able to trace Croyd."
"Reparametrization invariance of the bosonic string!" Travnicek shouted. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "Preserve the covariant gauge!"
Tachyon's eyes narrowed as he glanced at the printouts. "There are two strains of wild card," Tachyon said. "One old infection, one new."
Modular Man looked at Travnicek in surprise. Probabilities poured through his mind. Travnicek had been a wild card all along. His ability to build Modular Man had been a function of his talent, not native genius.
Tachyon looked at Travnicek. "Can he be awakened from this state?"
"I don't know."
Tachyon leaned over the gurney, looked at Travnicek intently. Mental powers, Modular Man thought.
Travnicek gave a shout and batted the alien's arms away. He sat up and stared.
"It's that fucking Lorelei!" he said. "She's doing this to me, the bitch. Just because I wouldn't tip."
Tachyon looked at him. "Mister, ah…"
Travnicek brandished a finger. "Stop singing when we do it, I said, and maybe I'll tip! Who needs that kind of distraction?"
"Sir," Tachyon said. "We need a list of your contacts over the last few days."
Sweat poured down Travnicek's face. " I haven't seen anyone. I've been in the loft the last three days. Only ate a few slices of pizza from the fridge." His voice rose to a shriek. "It's that Lorelei, I tell you! She's doing it!"
"Are you sure this Lorelei is your only contact?"
"Jesus, yes!" Travnicek held out his hand. His two toes were still in his palm. "Look what the bitch is doing to me!"
"Do you know how to reach her? Where she might be hiding?"
"Shangri-la Outcalls. They're in the book. Just have them send her." Rage entered his eyes. "Five bucks for the taxi!" Finn looked at Tachyon. "Could Croyd have become a female in the last three days?"
"Unlikely, but this remains the only lead we possess. If nothing else, this Lorelei might provide us with a lead to Croyd. Call the Squad. And the police."
"Sir." Finn's hooves rapped daintily on the tile floor as he left the curtained area. Tachyon's attention returned to Travnicek. "Have you a wild card history?" he asked. "Any manifestations?"
"Of course not." Travnicek reached for his bare foot, then jerked his hand back. " I have no feeling in my toes. Goddamn it!"
"The reason I asked, sir-this is your second dose of wild card. You have a previous infection."
Travnicek's head snapped up. Sweat sprayed over Tachyon's coat. "What the hell do you mean, previous infection? I've had nothing of the sort."
"It would appear that you have. Your gene structure has been thoroughly infiltrated by the virus."
"I've never been sick in my life, you fucking quack."
"Sir," the android interrupted. "You have unusual abilities. Involving… reparametrization invariance of the bosonic string?"
Travnicek looked at him for a long moment. Then comprehension dawned, followed by horror.
"My God," he said.
"Sir," said Tachyon. "There is a serum. It has a twenty percent chance of success."
Travnicek continued to stare at the android. "Success," he said. "That means both infections go, right?"
"Yes. If it works at all. But there is a risk…"
Hooves tapped on the floor. Finn appeared through the curtains. "All set, Doc." He carried a case, which he opened. Bottles and hypodermics were revealed. "I've brought the serum. Also the release forms."
Travnicek appeared to notice the centaur for the first time. He shrank away. "Get away from me, you freak!" Finn seemed embarrassed. Tachyon's face hardened, and he drew himself up. Angry hauteur burned in his face. "Dr. Finn is in charge here. He is a licensed physician-"
"I don't care if he's licensed to pull carriages in Central Park! A joker is doing this to me, and I'm not having a joker treat me!" Travnicek hesitated and looked at the toes in his hand. Decision entered his eyes. He flung the toes to the ground. "In fact, I'm not taking the fucking serum at all." He looked at the android. "Get me out of here. Now."
"Yes, sir." Dismay wafted through the android. He was not constructed so as to be able to refuse a direct command from his creator. He picked up Travnicek in his arms and rose into the air. Tachyon watched, arms folded in frozen, implacable hostility.