Aces High

He turned to his creation. "Why the fucking hell did you have your hands over your head the whole time?"

"My radar dome. I'm getting self-conscious. Everyone keeps asking me what's wrong with my head."

"A blushingly self-conscious multipurpose defensive attack system," Travnicek said. "Jesus Christ. Just what the world needs."

"Can I make myself a skullcap? I'm not going to get on many magazine covers the way I look now."

"Yeah, go ahead."

"The Aces High restaurant offers a free di

Travnicek was buoyant. His android had proved a success. He decided to send his creation to trash Bushmill's office at MIT.

"Sure," he said. "You'll get seen. That'll be good. But open your dome first. I want to make a few adjustments."

The winter sky was filled with bearded stars. Where the weather was clear, millions watched as fiery patterns-red, yellow, blue, green-stormed across the heavens. Even on Earth's dayside, smoky fingers tracked across the sky as the alien storm descended.

Their journey had lasted thirty thousand years, since their Swarm Mother had departed her last conquered planet, fired at random into the sky like a seedpod questing for fertile soil.

Thirty kilometers long, twenty across, the Swarm Mother looked like a rugged asteroid but was made entirely of organic material, her thick resinous hull protecting the vulnerable interior, the webs of nerve and fiber, the vast wet sacks of biomass and genetic material from which the Swarm Mother would construct her servants. Inside, the Swarm existed in stasis, barely alive, barely aware of the existence of anything outside itself. It was only when it neared Sol that the Swarm began to wake.

A year after the Swarm Mother crossed the orbit of Neptune, she detected chaotic radio emissions from Earth in which were perceived patterns recognized from memories implanted within its ancestral DNA. Intelligent life existed here.

The Swarm Mother, inasmuch as she had a preference, found bloodless conquests the most convenient. A target without intelligent life would fall to repeated invasions of superior Swarm predators, then captured genetic material and biomass would be used to construct a new generation of Swarm parents. But intelligent species had been known to protect their planets against assault. This contingency had to be met.

The most efficient way to conquer an enemy was through microlife. Dispersal of a tailored virus could destroy anything that breathed. But the Swarm Mother could not control a virus the way she commanded larger species; and viruses had an a

Slowly, over the-next eleven years, the Swarm Mother began to restructure herself. Small idiot Swarm servantsbuds-tailored genetic material under carefully controlled conditions and inserted it via tame-virus implant into waiting biomass. First a monitoring intelligence was constructed, receiving and recording the incomprehensible broadcasts from Earth. Then, slowly, a reasoning intelligence took shape, one capable of analyzing the data and acting on it. A master intelligence, enormous in its capabilities but as yet understanding only a fraction of the patterned radiation it was receiving.

Time, the Swarm Mother reasoned, for action. As a boy stirs an ant nest with a stick, the Swarm Mother determined to stir the Earth. Swarm servants multiplied in her body, moving genetic material, reconstructing the most formidable predators the Swarm held within its memory. Solid fuel thrusters were grown like rare orchids in special chambers constructed for the purpose. Space-capable pods were fashioned out of tough resins by blind servants deep in the Swarm Mother's womb. One third of the available biomass was dedicated to this, the first generation of the Swarm's offspring.

The first generation was not intelligent, but could respond in a general way to the Swarm Mother's telepathic commands. Formidable idiots, they were programmed simply to kill and destroy. Tactics were planted within their genetic memory. They were placed in their pods, the solid-fuel thrusters flamed, and they were launched, like a flickering firefly invasion, for Earth.

Each individual bud was part of a branch, each of which had two to ten thousand buds. Four hundred branches were aimed at different parts of Earth's landmass.

The ablative resin of the pods burned in Earth's atmosphere, lighting the sky. Threads deployed from each pod, slowing the descent, stabilizing the spi

The buds, after their long stasis, woke hungry.

Across the horseshoe-shaped lounge bar, a man dressed in some kind of complicated battle armor stood with his foot on the brass rail and addressed a lithe blond masked woman who, in odd inattentive moments, kept turning transparent. "Pardon me," he said. "But didn't I see you at the ape-escape?"

"Your table's almost ready, Modular Man," said Hiram Worchester. "I'm sorry, but I didn't realize that Fortunato would invite all his friends."

"That's okay, Hiram," the android said. "We're just fine. Thanks." He was experimenting with using contractions. He wasn't certain when they were appropriate and he was determined to find out.

"There are a pair of photographers waiting, too."

"Let them get some pictures after we're seated, then chase them out. Okay?"

"Certainly." Hiram, owner of the Aces High, smiled at the android. "Say," he added, "your tactics this afternoon were excellent. I plan to make the creature weightless if it ever climbs this high. It never does, though. Seventy-two stories is the record."

"Next time, Hiram. I'm sure it'll work."

The restaurateur gave a pleased smile and bustled out. The android raised a hand for another drink.

Cyndi was wearing an azure something that exposed most of her sternum and even more of her spine. She looked up at Modular Man and smiled.

"I like the cap."

"Thanks. I made it myself."

She looked at his empty whiskey glass. "Does that actually-you know-make you high?"

The android gazed down at the single-malt. "No. Not really. I just put it in a holding tank with the food and let my flux generators break it down into energy. But somehow.."

His new glass of single-malt arrived and he accepted it with a smile. "Somehow it just feels good to stand here, put my foot on the rail, and drink it."

"Yeah. I know what you mean."

"And I can taste, of course. I don't know what's supposed to taste good or bad, though, so I just try everything. I'm working it out." He held the single-malt under his nose, sniffed, then tasted it. Taste receptors crackled. He felt what seemed to be a minor explosion in his nasal cavity.

The man in combat armor tried to put his arm around the masked woman. His arm passed through her. She looked up at him with smiling blue eyes.

"I was waiting for that," she said. "I'm in a nonsubstantial body, schmuck."

Hiram arrived to show them to their table. Flashbulbs began popping as Hiram opened a bottle of champagne. Looking out the plate-glass window into the sky, the android saw a shooting star through a gap in the cloud.

"I could get used to this," Cyndi said.

"Wait," the android said. He was hearing something on his radio receiver. The Empire State was tall enough to pick up transmissions from far away. Cyndi looked at him curiously. "What's the problem?"