Aces High

"My apartment is just a little distance. Fifty-seventh Street. Maybe you should go there and rest."

"Apartment? What?"

Gently he took command of her mind and steered her up the street. Rarely did he find someone so pliable. A great bubble of joy welled up in him.

Once upon a time he only used his power to get laid, or maybe to help earn a promotion or two at work. Then he met Lord Amun and discovered what power was really for. He'd quit his job, and lived now as a dependent of the Order.

He'd stay in her mind for a few hours, he thought. Find out who she was, what secret terrors lived in her. And then do them to her, one and then another, living inside her mind and his, enjoying her cringing, her self-loathing, as he forced her to beg, right out loud, for everything he did to her. He would caress her mind, enjoy the growing madness as he made her plead for her every debasement, her every fear. These were only a few of the things he'd learned from watching Lord Amun. The things that made him come alive. For a few hours, at least, he could submerge himself in another's fear, and forget his own.

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/Pe

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?"