Down And Dirty

"Open your chest," Travnicek said. "Give me the monitor. There's a spare guidance unit in the cabinet."

"There's a hole in my chest."

The yellow eyes looked at him. The android waited for an outburst.

"Better patch it yourself," Travnicek said mildly. "When you have the time." He took the flux monitor and stepped to a workbench. "It's getting hard to think about all this," he said.

"Preserve your genius, sir." Modular Man tried not to let his desperation show. "Fight the infection. I'll get Croyd here."

A touch of vinegar entered Travnicek's voice. "Yah. You do that. Now let me worry about the fermionic coordinates, okay?"

"Yes, sir." Mildly reassured.

He staggered to the locker and began looking for a new gyroscope.

The BARNETT FOR PRESIDENT poster had been defaced. Someone had drawn a knife or fingernail file through the candidate's picture several times, then written JOKER DEATH over it in thick red letters. Next to it was a freehand drawing of an animal head-a black dog?-executed in thick felt tip. "Hi. I need to talk."

Kate blew cigarette smoke. "Okay. For a little while."

"How are the Roman poets coming along?"

"If Latin weren't already a dead language, Statius would have killed it."

Modular Man was hunched over the public phone again. His gyroscope had been replaced and he could walk and fly. Except for the heavy presence of the National Guard and Army, the streets were nearly deserted. Half the restaurants and cabarets in jokertown were shut down.

"Kate," the android said, " I think I'm going to die." There was a moment of startled silence. Then, "Tell me."

"My creator got infected by the wild card. He's turning into a joker and forgetting how to repair me. And he's sending me after the plague carrier, hoping the man can make it stop."

"Okay. Cautiously. "I'm following.

"He seems to think the man's deliberately doing this to him. But must people think the guy is just a carrier, and if that's true, and I bring him to my creator, the chances are nine to one that if my creator's reinfected, he'll draw the Black Queen and die."

"Yes."

"And the man I'm after-his name is Croyd-is the man who killed me the first time. And this time Croyd has a protector who is more powerful than he is. We're already fought twice, and they've beaten me both times. The last time I could easily have died. And my creator can't put me together again. He's losing his abilities. He may not be able to repair the damage from the last attack."

Kate drew on her cigarette, exhaled. "Mod Man," she said, "you need help."

"Yes. That's why I'm calling you."

"I mean other wild cards. You can't face these two alone."

"If I went to SCARE or someone, and we captured Croyd together, then I'd have to fight the SCARE aces to get him away. I'd be an outlaw."

"Maybe you could make some kind of deal with them."

"I'll think about it. I'll try." Despair wailed through him. "I'm going to die," he said.

"I'm sorry. Can't you just leave?"

"I'm programmed to obey him. I can't refuse a direct order. And I'm programmed to battle the enemies of society. I don't have a choice in any of that. People like the Turtle, or Cyclone-it's their decision to do what they do. It was never mine. I'm not human that way."

"I see. "

"Sooner or later I'm going to lose a fight. I don't heal like people, someone has to repair me. Any parts that get broken wont get fixed. If I don't die, I'll be a cripple, pieces falling off." Like Travnicek, he thought, and a cold shudder ran through his mind. "And even if I'm crippled," he went on, "I'll still have to fight. I still won't have any choice."

There was a long silence. " I don't know what to tell you." Her voice was choked.

"I was sort of immortal before," Modular Man said. "My creator was going to mass-produce me and sell me to the military. If any single unit was destroyed, the others would go on. They'd have identical programming; they'd still be me, at least mostly me. Now that's not going to happen."

"I'm sorry."

"What happens to machines when they die? I've been wondering that."

"I-"

"Your ancient philosophers never thought about that, right?"

"I suppose they didn't. But they had a lot to say about mortality in general. `Must not all things be swallowed in death'-Plato, quoting Socrates."

"Thank you. That's really comforting."

"There's not a lot of comforting things to say about death. I'm sorry."

"I never really worried about it before. I'd never died before."

"Most of us don't get to come back even once. None of the others killed on Wild Card Day came back."

"This may be a temporary aberration. Normality may resume at any point."

The android realized he was shouting. The words echoed on the empty street. He swiftly wrote himself a piece of programming to keep his voice level.

Kate thought for a long moment. "Most of us have a lifetime to get used to the idea that we have to die. You've just had a few hours."

"I have a hard time getting my mind around it. There are all these feedback loops in my brain, and my thoughts keep going round and round. They're taking up more and more space."

"In other words, you're panicking."

"Am I?" He thought about this for a moment. "I suppose I am."

"The prospect of death, to misquote Samuel Johnson, is supposed to concentrate the mind wonderfully."

"I'll work at it." He suited action to words, swiftly putting an end to the runamuck computer logic that was smashing up against too many unknowns and infinities to do anything other than fill up his logic systems with macroatomic hash. A cooler and more systematic approach to the problem seemed indicated.

"Okay. That's done."

"That was fast."

"One point six six six seconds." She laughed. "Not bad."

"I'm glad you recognized what was happening. I'm not really wired to deal with abstracts. I'd never got hung up that way before."

"You're still superhuman. No human could do that." She thought for a moment. "Do you know Millay? `My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-It gives a lovely light."'

The android considered this. "I suppose that, aesthetically, I might have produced an objectively lovely light when I blew up. The thought seems a bit barren of comfort, mainly I suppose because I wasn't there to see it."

"I think you missed my point." Patiently. "You are incredibly fast at both action and cognition. Your means of apprehending your surroundings are more complete and acute than those of a human. You have the capacity to experience your existence more thoroughly and intensely than anyone on the planet. Might this not compensate for any shortness of duration?" The notion was encoded, spun into the maelstrom of the android's electronic mind, whirled like a leaf into a cold electronic torrent.

"I'll have to think about it," he said.

"You seemed to have crammed a lot of existence into the months you were on the planet. You had many of the experiences that people say lead to wisdom. War, comradeship, love, responsibility-even death."

The android gazed into the mutilated face of Barnett, the presidential candidate, and wondered who the man in the picture was. " I guess I kept busy,"he said.

"There are a lot of people who would envy that existence."

"I'll try to bear that in mind."

"You burn very bright. Cherish that."

"I'll try."

"And you may not burn out. You fought the Swarm without taking serious injury, and there were hundreds of thousands of them. These are just a couple of guys."

"A couple of guys."

"You'll deal with it. I have confidence in you."

"Thank you." JOKER DEATH, the poster read. "I think you've given me something to consider."