"The Aces High restaurant offers a free dinner for two to anyone who recaptures the ape when it escapes. May I go this evening? It seems to me that I could meet a lot of useful people. And Cyndi-the woman I rescued-wanted to meet me there.
Peregrine also asked me to appear on her television program. May I go?"
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 annoying habit of mutating into things poisonous to their hosts. The Swarm Mother, thirty kilometers long and filled with boimass and tailored mutagenic DNA, was too vulnerable herself to biologic attack to run the risk of creating offspring that might devour its mother. Another approach was dictated.
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 spinning lifeboats. Then, just above the Earth's surface, the pods burst open, scattering their cargo.
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?"
The transmission ended. "I'm going to have to make my apologies. Can I call you later?" the android said. "There's an emergency in New Jersey. It seems Earth has been invaded by aliens from outer space."
"Well. If you've got to go ."
"I'll call you later. I promise."
The android's shape dimmed. Ozone crackled. He rose through the ceiling.
Hiram stared, the champagne bottle in his hand. He turned to Cyndi. "Was he serious?" he asked.
"He's a nice guy, for a machine," Cyndi said, propping her chin on her hand.
"But definitely a screw loose somewhere." She held out her glass. "Let's party, Hiram."
Not far away, a man lay torn by nightmare. Monsters slavered at him in his dreams. Images passed before his mind, a dead woman, an inverted pentagram, a lithe naked man with the head of a jackal. Inchoate shrieks gathered in his throat. He woke with a cry, covered in sweat.
He reached blindly to the bedside lamp and switched it on. He fumbled for his glasses. His nose was slippery with sweat and the thick, heavy spectacles slid down its length. The man didn't notice.
He thought of the telephone, then realized he'd have to maneuver himself into his wheelchair in order to reach it. There were easier ways to communicate.
Within his mind he reached out into the city. He felt a sleepy mind answering inside his own.
Wake up, Hubbard, he told the other mentally, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. TIAMAT has come.
A pillar of darkness rose over Princeton. The android saw it on radar and first thought it smoke, but then realized the cloud did not drift with the wind, but was composed of thousands of living creatures circling over the landscape like a flock of scavenger birds. The pillar was alive.
There was a touch of uncertainty in the android's macroatomic heart. His programming hadn't prepared him for this.
Emergency broadcasts crackled in his mind, questioning, begging for assistance, crying in despair. Modular Man slowed, his perceptions searching the dark land below. Large infrared signatures-more Swarm buds--crawled among tree-lined streets. The signatures were scattered but their movement was purposeful, heading toward the town. It seemed as if Princeton was their rallying point. The android dropped, heard tearing noises, screams, shots. The guns on his shoulders tracked as he dipped and increased speed.
The Swarm bud was legless, moving like a snail with undulating thrusts of its slick thirty-foot body. The head was armored, with dripping sideways jaws. A pair of giant boneless arms terminated in claws. The creature was butting its head into a two-story suburban colonial, punching holes, the arms questing through windows, looking for things that lived inside. Shots were coming from the second floor. Christmas lights blinked from the edges of the roof, the ornamental shrubs.
Modular Man hovered overhead, fired a precise burst from his laser. The pulsed microwave was invisible, silent. The creature quivered, rolled on its side, began to thrash. The house shuddered to mindless blows. The android shot again.
The creature trembled, lay still. The android slipped feetfirst into the window where the shots had been coming from, saw a stark-naked fat man clutching a deer rifle, a teenage boy with a target pistol, a woman clutching two young girls.
The woman was screaming. The two girls were too stunned even to tremble. "Jesus Christ," the fat man said.
"I killed it," the android said. "Can you get to your car?"
"I think so," the fat man said. He stuffed rounds into his rifle. His wife was still screaming.
"Head east, toward New York," Modular man said. "They seem to be thickest around here. Maybe you can convoy with some neighbors."
"What's happening?" the man asked, slamming the bolt back and then forward.
"Another wild card outbreak?"
"Monsters from space, apparently." There was a crashing sound from behind the house. The android spun, saw what looked like a serpent sixty feet long, moving in curving sidewinder pattern as it bowled down bushes, trees, power poles. The underside of the serpent's body writhed with tenfoot cilia. Modular Man sped out the window, fired another burst of microwave at the thing's head. No effect.
Another burst, no success. Behind him, the deer rifle barked. The woman was still screaming. Modular Man concluded that the serpent's brain wasn't in its head. He began firing precise bursts down the length of its body.
Timbers moaned as the serpent struck the house. The building lurched from its foundations, one wall shattered, the upper story drooping dangerously. The android fired again and again. He could feel his energy running low. The deer rifle fired once more. The serpent raised its head, then drove it through the window where the fat man was firing. The serpent's body pulsed several times.
Its tail thrashed. The android fired. The screaming stopped. The serpent withdrew its head and began to coil toward the next house. The android was almost drained of energy, barely retaining enough to stay airborne.
These tactics, Modular Man decided, were not working. Attempts to aid individuals would result in a scattered and largely futile effort. He should scout the enemy, discover their numbers and strategy, then find organized resistance somewhere and assist.
He began flying toward Princeton, his sensors questing, trying to gather a picture of what was happening.
Sirens were beginning to wail from below. People stumbled from broken homes.
Emergency vehicles raced beneath flickering lights. A few automobiles zigzagged crazily down rubble-strewn streets. Here and there fires were breaking out, but dampness and occasional drizzle were keeping them confined. Modular Man saw a dozen more serpents, a hundred smaller predators that moved like panthers on their half-dozen legs, scores of a strange creature that looked like a leaping spider, its four-foot-wide body bounding over trees on stiltlike legs. A twenty-foot bipedal carnivore brandished teeth like a tyrannosaur: Other things, difficult to see on infrared, moved like carpets close to the ground. Something unseen fired a cloud of three-foot needles at him, but he saw it coming on radar and dodged. The cloud over Princeton was still orbiting. The android decided to investigate.
There were thousands of them, dark featherless flapping creatures like flying throw rugs. Amid the concerted roar of their wings they made low moaning noises, thrumming like bass strings. They swooped and dove, and the android understood their tactics when he saw a vehicle burst from a Princeton garage and skid down the street. A group of flappers swooped down in a group, battering at the car bodily and enfolding the target within their leathery shapes, smothering it beneath their weight. The android, his energies partially recovered, fired into the fliers, dropping a few, but the car swerved over a curb and smashed into a building. More fliers descended as the first group began to squeeze through shattered windows. Corrosive acid stained the car's finish. The android rose and began firing into the airborne mass, trying to attract their attention.
A cloud dove for him, hundreds at once, and Modular Man increased speed, bearing south, trying to lead them away, dead fliers dropping like leaves as he fired short bursts behind him. More and more of the orbiters were drawn into the pursuit. Apparently the creatures were not very intelligent. Dodging and weaving, staying just ahead of the fluttering cloud, the android soon had thousands of the fliers after him. He came up over a rise, and saw the Swarm host before him. For a moment his sensors were overwhelmed by the staggering input.
An army of creatures were advancing in a curved wave, a sharply angled crescent that pointed north to Princeton. The air was filled with grinding, rending sounds as the Swarm bulldozed its way through a town-houses, trees, office buildings, everything-leveling everything in its path. The android rose, making calculations, the fliers moaning and flapping at his back. The host was moving quickly for doing such a thorough job; the android estimated twelve to fifteen miles per hour.
Modular Man had a good idea of the average size of a Swarm creature. Dividing the vast infrared emission by its component parts, he concluded he was looking at a minimum of forty thousand creatures. More were joining all the time. There were another twenty thousand fliers at least. The numbers were insane.
The android, unlike a human, could not doubt his calculations. Someone had to be informed of what the world was facing. His shoulder-mounted guns swung back to allow for better streamlining and he circled back north, increasing speed. The fliers circled but were unable to keep up. They began to flap back in the direction of Princeton.
Modular Man was over Princeton in a matter of seconds. A thousand or more of the Swarm had penetrated into the town and the android detected the constant smashing of buildings under assault, the scattered crackle of gunfire, and from one location the boom, rattle, and crash of heavier weapons. The android sped for the sound.
The National Guard armory was under siege. One of the serpent creatures, torn apart by explosive rounds, was writhing on the street in front, thrashing up clouds of fallen tear gas. Dead predators and human bodies dotted the landscape around the building. An M60 tank was overturned on the concrete out front; another blocked an open vehicle-bay door, flooding the approach with infrared light. Three Guardsmen in riot gear, complete with gas masks, stood on the tank behind the turret. The android fired eight precisely placed shots, killing the current wave of attackers, and flew past the tank, lighting next to the Guardsmen. They gazed at him owlishly through their masks. Behind were a dozen civilians with shotguns and hunting rifles, and behind them about fifty refugees. Somewhere in the building, revving engines boomed.'
"Who's in charge?"
A man wearing the silver bars of a lieutenant raised his hand. "Lieutenant Goldfarb," he said. "I was duty officer. What the hell's going on?"
"You'll have to get these people out of here. Aliens from outer space have landed."
"I didn't figure it was Chinese." His voice was muffled by the gas mask.
"They're coming this way from Grovers Mills."
One of the other Guardsmen began to wheeze. The sound was barely recognizable as laughter. "Just like War of the Worlds. Great. "
"Shut the hell up." Goldfarb stiffened in anger. "I've only got about twenty effectives here. Do you think we can hold them at the Raritan Canal?"
"There are at least forty thousand of them."
Goldfarb slumped against the turret. "We'll head north, then. Try to make Somerville."
"I suggest you move quickly. The fliers are coming back. Have you seen them?"
Goldfarb gestured to the sprawled bodies of a few of the flappers. "Right there.
Tear gas seems to keep them out."
"Something else coming, boss." One of the soldiers raised a grenade launcher.
Without a glance Modular Man fired over his shoulder and downed a spider-thing.
"Never mind," the soldier said.
"Look," Goldfarb said. "The governor's mansion is in town. Morven. He's our commander in chief, we should try to get him out."
"I could make the attempt," the android said, "but I don't know where the mansion is." Over his shoulder he disposed of an armored slug. He looked at Goldfarb. "I could fly with you in my arms."
"Right." Goldfarb slung his M16. He gave orders to the other National Guardsmen to get the civilians into the armored cars, then form a convoy.
"Without lights," the android said. "The fliers may not perceive you as readily."
"We've got IR equipment. Standard on the vehicles."
"I'd use it." He thought he was getting his contractions right.
Goldfarb finished giving his orders. National Guard troops appeared from other parts of the building, dragging guns and ammunition. Tracked vehicles were revving. The android wrapped his arms around Goldfarb and raced into the sky.
"Air-borne!" Goldfarb yelled. Modular Man gathered this was an expression of military approval.
A massive rustling in the sky indicated the fliers returning. The android dove low, weaving among shattered houses and torn tree-stumps.
"Hol-ee shit," Goldfarb said. Morven was a ruin. The governor's mansion had fallen in on its foundations. Nothing living could be seen.
The android returned the Guardsman to his command, on the way disposing of a group of twenty attackers preparing to assault the Guard headquarters. Inside, the garage was filled with vehicle exhaust. Six armored personnel carriers and two tanks were ready. Goldfarb was dropped near a carrier. The air was roaring with the sound of fliers.
"I'm going to try to lure the fliers away," the android said. "Wait till the sky is clearing before you move."
He raced into the sky again, firing short bursts of his laser, shouting into the darkening sky. Once more the fliers roared after him. He led them toward Grovers Mills again, seeing the vast crescent of earthbound Swarm advancing at their steady, appalling rate. He doubled back, stranding the fliers well behind him, and accelerated toward Princeton. Below, a few fliers rose after him. It looked as if they had been dining on the corpse of a man wearing complicated battle armor. The same armor Modular Man had seen at Aces High, now stained and blackened with digestive acid.
In Princeton he saw Goldfarb's convoy making its way along Highway 206 in a blaze of infrared light and machinegun fire. Refugees, attracted by the sound of the tanks and APCs, were clinging to the vehicles. The android fired again and again, dropping Swarm creatures as they leaped to the attack, his energies growing low. He followed the convoy until they seemed out of the danger area, when the convoy had to slow in a vast traffic jam of refugees racing north.
The android decided to head for Fort Dix.
Detective-Lieutenant John F X. Black of the Jokertown precinct didn't actually remove the handcuff's from Tachyon's wrists until they were just outside the mayor's office at city hall. The other detectives kept their shotguns ready.
Fear, Tachyon thought. These people are terrified. Why? He rubbed his wrists.
"My coat and hat, please." The addition of the pleasantry made it no less a command.
"If you insist," said Black, handing over the feathered cavalier hat and the lavender velvet swallowtail coat that matched Tach's eyes. Black's hatchet face split in a cynical smile. "It'd be hard to find even a detective first grade with your kind of taste," he said.
"I daresay not," Tach said coldly. He fluffed his hair back over the collar.
"Through there," said Black. Tach poised the hat over one eye and pushed through.
It was a large paneled room, with a long table, and it was bedlam. There were police, firemen, men in military uniforms. The mayor was shouting into a radiotelephone and, to judge by his savage expression, not getting through.
Tach's glance wandered over to the far side of the room and his eyes narrowed.
Senator Hartmann stood in quiet conversation with a number of aces: Peregrine, Pulse, the Howler, the whole SCARE bunch.
Tach always felt uneasy around Hartmann-a New York liberal or not, he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Ace Resources and Endeavors, the SCARE
committee that had lived up to its name under Joseph McCarthy. The laws were different now, but Tach wanted nothing to do with an organization that recruited aces to serve the purposes of those in power.
The mayor handed the radiophone to an aide, and before he could rush off somewhere else Tach marched toward him, shooting his cufs and fixing the mayor with a cold glare.
"Your storm troopers brought me," he said. "They broke down my door. I trust the city will replace it, as well as anything that may be stolen while the door is down."
"We've got a problem," the mayor said, and then an aide rushed in, his hands full of filling-station maps of New Jersey. The mayor told him to spread them on the table. Tachyon continued talking through the interruption.
"You might have telephoned. I would have come. Your goons didn't even knock.
There are still constitutional protections in this country, even in Jokertown."
"We knocked," said Black. "We knocked real loud." He turned to one of his detectives, a joker with brown, scaled flesh. "You heard me knock, didn't you, Kant?"
Kant grinned, a lizard with teeth. Tachyon shuddered. "Sure did, Lieutenant."
"How about you, Matthias?"
"I heard you knock, too."
Tach clenched his teeth. "They . . . did . . . not . . . knock."
Black shrugged. "The doctor probably didn't hear us. He was busy." He leered.
"He had company, if you take my meaning. A nurse. Real peachy." He held up a legal-sized document. "Anyway, our warrant was legal. Signed by Judge Steiner right here just half an hour ago."
The mayor turned to Tachyon. "We just wanted to make sure you didn't have anything to do with this."
Tach removed his hat and waved it languidly before his face as he looked at the room filled full of rushing people, including-Good God, a three-foot-high tyrannosaur who had just turned into a naked preadolescent boy.
"What are you talking about, my man?" he finally asked. The mayor gazed at Tachyon with eyes like chips of ice. "We have reports of what might be a wild card outbreak in Jersey."
Tach's heart lurched. Not again, he thought, remembering those first awful weeks, the deaths, the mutilations that made his blood run cold, the madness, the smell . . . No, it wasn't possible. He gulped.
"What may I do to help?" he said.
"Forty thousand in one group," the general muttered, fixing the figures in his mind. "Probably in Princeton by now. Twenty thousand fliers. Maybe another twenty thousand scattered over the countryside, moving to rendezvous at Princeton." He looked up at the android. "Any idea where they'll move after Princeton? Philadelphia or New York? South or north?"'
"I can't say."
The lieutenant general gnawed his knuckle. He was a thin, bespectacled man, and his name was Carter. He seemed not at all disturbed by the thought of carnivorous aliens landing in New Jersey. He commanded the U.S. First Army from his headquarters here at Fort Meade, Maryland. Modular Man had been sent here by a sweating major general at Fort Dix, which had turned out to be a training center.
Chaos surrounded Carter's aura of calm. Phones rang, aides bustled, and outside in the corridor men were shouting. "So far I've only got the Eighty-second and the National Guard," Carter said. "It's not enough to defend both New York and Philly against those numbers. If I had the Marine regiments from Lejeune we could do better, but the Marine Commandant doesn't want to release them from the Rapid Deployment Force, which is commanded by a Marine. He wants the RDF to take command here, particularly since the Eighty-second is also under its protocols."
He sipped cranberry juice, sighed. "It's all the process of moving a peacetime army onto wartime footing. Our time will come, and then we'll have our innings."