The noise faded. Internals ran lightspeed checks. Radar painted an image in his brain, superimposed it on the visuals. "All monitored systems are functioning," he found himself saying.
The St. Elmo's fluorescence faded, revealing sagging bare roofbeams, an half-open skylight with the glass painted black from the inside, diagrams tacked up helter-skelter, drooping electric cables. Electric fans made a busy stir in the air. Something in the room moved, imaged first by radar, then by visuals. He recognized the figure, the tall, white-haired man with the hawk nose and disdainful eyes. Maxim Travnicek. A frigid smile curled Travnicek's lips. He spoke with a middleEuropean accent.
"Welcome back, toaster. The land of the living awaits."
"I blew up." Modular Man examined this possibility with cold impartiality as he pulled on a jumpsuit. A fly buzzed in the distance.
"You blew up," said Travnicek. "Modular Man the invincible android blew himself to bits. In a big fight at Aces High with the Astronomer and the Egyptian Masons. Lucky I had a backup of your memory."
Memories poured over the android's macroatomic switches. Modular Man recognized Travnicek's new Jokertown loft, the one he'd moved into after being evicted from the bigger place on the Lower East Side. The place was stiflingly hot, and electric fans plugged into overworked extension cords did little to make the place seem like home. Equipment, the big flux generators and computers, were jammed together on home-built platforms and raw plywood shelving. The ultrasonics had burst the picture tubes in two of the monitors.
"The Astronomer?" he said. "He hadn't been seen in months. I have no recollection of his return."
Travnicek made a dismissive gesture. "The fight happened after I last backed up your memory."
"I blew up?" The android didn't want to think about this. "How could I blow up?"
"Right. A surprise to both of us. Half-intelligent microwave ovens aren't supposed to explode."
Travnicek sat on a thirdhand plastic chair, a cigarette in his hand. He was thinner than before, his reddened eyes sunk deep in hollows. He looked years older. His straight hair, usually combed back from his forehead, stuck out in tufts. He seemed to have been doing his own barbering.
Travnicek wore baggy, army-green surplus trousers and a cream-colored formal shirt with food stains and frills on the front. He wasn't wearing a tie.
The android had never seen Travnicek without a tie. Something must have happened to the man, he realized. And then a frightening thought came to him.
"How long have I been…?"
"Dead?"
"Yes."
"You blew up last Wild Card Day. Now it's June fifteenth."
"Nine months." The android was horrified.
Travnicek seemed irritated. He threw away his cigarette and ground the stub into the bare plywood floor. "How long do you think it takes to build a blender of your capabilities? Jesus Christ, it took weeks just to decipher the notes I wrote last time." He gave an expansive wave of his hand. "Look at this place. I've been working day and night."
Fast food containers were everywhere, a bewildering variety that strongly represented Chinese places, pizza joints, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Flies buzzed among the cartons. In and among the containers were bits of scrap, yellow legal paper, pieces of paper bags, torn cigarette cartons, and the insides of matchbooks. All with notes that Travnicek had made to himself during his fever of construction, half of them ground into the naked floor and covered with footprints. The electric fans Travnicek used to move the sluggish air in the place had done a good job of scattering them.
Travnicek stood up and turned away, lighting another cigarette. "The place needs a good cleaning," he said. "You know where the broom is."
"Yes, sir." Resigned to it.
"I've got about fifty bucks left after paying the rent on this fucking heap. Enough for a little celebration." He jingled change in his pockets. "Gotta make a little phone call." Travnicek leered. "You're not the only one with girlfriends."
Modular Man ran his internal checks again, looked down at his body in the half-zipped jumpsuit.
Nothing seemed out of place.
Still, he thought, something was wrong. He went after the broom.
Half an hour later, carrying two plastic trash bags full of fast food cartons, the android opened the skylight, floated through it, crossed the roof, then dropped down the air shaft that led to the alley behind. His intention was to toss the trash in a Dumpster that he knew waited in the alley.
His feet touched broken concrete. Sounds echoed down the alley. Heavy breathing, a guttural moan. A strange, lyric, birdlike sound.
In Jokertown the sounds could mean anything. The victim of an assault bleeding against the brownstone wall; the sad and horrible joker Snotman struggling for breath; a derelict passed out and having a nightmare; a customer from Freakers who'd had too much liquor or too many grotesque sights and had stumbled away to upchuck his guts…
The android was cautious. He lowered the trash bags silently to the pavement and floated silently a few feet above the surface. Rotating his body to the horizontal, he peered out into the alleyway.
The heavy breathing was coming from Travnicek. He had a woman up against the wall, lunging into her with his trousers down around his ankles.
The woman wore an elaborate custom mask over her lower face: a joker. The upper half of her face was not disfigured, but it wasn't pretty, either. She was not young. She wore a tube top and a glittery silver jacket and a red miniskirt. Her plastic boots were white. The trilling sound came from behind the mask. Short-time in an alley was probably costing Travnicek about fifteen dollars.
Travnicek muttered something in Czech. The woman's face was impassive. She regarded the alley wall with dreamy eyes. The musical sound she was making was something she probably did all the time, a sound unconnected with what she was doing. The android decided he didn't want to watch this anymore.
He left the garbage in the airshaft. The trilling sound pursued him like a flight of birds.
Someone had stuck a red, white, and blue poster on the plastic hood over the pay phone: BARNETT FOR PRESIDENT. The android didn't know who Barnett was. His plastic fingertips jabbed the coin slot on the pay phone. There was a click, then a ringing signal. The android had long ago discovered an affinity with communications equipment.
"Hello."
"Alice? This is Modular Man." A slight pause. "Not funny."
"This really is Modular Man. I'm back."
"Modular Man blew up!"
"My creator built me over again. I've got almost all the memories of the original." The android's eyes scanned the street, looking up and down. There were very few people on the street for a warm June afternoon. "You feature in a lot of those memories, Alice."
"Oh, god."
There was another long pause. The android noticed that the pedestrians on the street seemed to be giving one another a lot of space. One of them wore a gauze mask over his mouth and nose. Cars were few.
"Can I see you?" he asked.
"You were important for me, you know."
"I'm glad, Alice." The android sensed impending disappointment in his demotion to the past tense.
"I mean, every man I'd ever been involved with was so demanding. Wanting this, wanting that. I never had any time to find out what Alice wanted. And then I meet this guy who's willing to give me all the space I need, who didn't want anything from me because he can't want anything, because he's a machine, you know, and because he can get me seated at the good tables at Aces High and because we can fly and dance with the moon…" There was a brief silence. "You were really important to me, Mod Man. But I can't see you. I'm married now."