George Martin - Down And Dirty

He flew up into the engine's path. It thudded solidly into his shoulder, driving him back. Croyd's companion reached up and seized the android's feet. Fingers dug with desperate strength into his plastic flesh.

Mr. Gravemold flung himself off the rail, smashing Croyd from behind with a forearm. Croyd spun, his fingers talons. His pink eyes gleamed murderously. He clawed at the joker, trying to puncture his suit. Mr. Gravemold danced out of the way. Both were moving unnaturally fast.

Modular Man rose into the sky. The young man clung gamely to his legs. Kicking at him, the android thought, would only make him stronger.

Suddenly Croyd shuddered. He gasped, clutched at his middle. The balmy summer air suddenly turned a few degrees colder.

The cold of the grave, the android thought. It wasn't some fancy metaphor. The joker had actually meant what he said. Lights flashed on the far end of the pier. A siren wailed. The ambulance from the Jokertown Clinic had arrived.

Croyd staggered back. He seized the package, flung it at Mr. Gravemold. The joker easily avoided it. It splashed into the water beyond.

"Death is cold, Mr. Crenson," said Mr. Gravemold. His deep actor's voice rang past his gas mask, over the sound of the approaching ambulance. "Death is cold, and I am cold as death."

The joker raised a clenched fist, and the temperature dropped again. Mr. Gravemold, Modular Man realized, was stealing heat from the air. Croyd stumbled, went down on one knee. His white face had turned blue. His companion gave a cry of outrage and dropped to the surface of the pier with the Automag right in front him. He snatched up the gun and pointed it at the figure in the biochem suit.

Croyd fell flat on his face. His limbs twitched uncontrollably. The android dove at maximum speed. The gun went off like a clap of thunder. A heavy slug caromed off Modular Man's metal substructure and tumbled away into the night. The bullet's energy began to spin the android. Unable to stop himself in time, he smashed through the guardrail and zoomed over the Hudson. He stabilized the spin and began to loop back toward the fight.

Ambulance lights flashed bright across the pier. Below, the package was inflating automatically at the touch of the water. A rubber raft.

Mr. Gravemold, still moving with unnatural speed, danced away from Croyd's bodyguard. The young man had difficulty tracking with the heavy gun. He fired twice and missed both times.

Mr. Gravemold raised his fist. "No!" Modular Man shouted. The temperature dropped again. Croyd's bodyguard staggered and fell, the gun falling from his hand.

It worked, the android thought numbly. Then he realized that Mr. Gravemold's abilities didn't fire cold, but rather stole heat. With energy going out rather than in, the bodyguard's talent had nothing to work with.

Modular Man did a loop in air, came down on the albino, seized Croyd by collar and belt. Brakes shrieked as the ambulance came to a stop. Jokers in biochem suits spilled out. Laughter boomed from behind Mr. Gravemold's gas mask.

The android rose into the sky with his shivering burden and accelerated. Puzzled jokers, their face masks giving them tunnel vision, peered at the sky, trying to see where he and Croyd had gone.

Modular Man shook Croyd like a rag doll. "Why did you blow me up?" he shouted.

Croyd's teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult to understand him.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time."

Buildings sped beneath them. Fury raced through the android. He shook Croyd again. "Why?"

Croyd began to thrash. Modular Man suppressed the albino's uncoordinated movements with ease.

He had won, he realized. Carefully he tried to cherish the feeling.

Croyd was shivering uncontrollably as Modular Man lighted on a rooftop and took off the emergency pack he'd strapped to his back in the clinic. It contained a biochem suit, a blanket, a canvas tarpaulin, a sack, and some cord. The android wrapped the albino in a blanket before stuffing him into the biochem warfare suit.

"Who are you working for?" Croyd's teeth chattered louder than his voice. "The Mafia? The other guys?"

The android screamed at him. "Why did you blow me In the darkness Croyd's eyes were the color of blood. "Seemed like a good idea then," he said. "Better idea now." A shivering fit struck him, and his teeth began to chatter like castanets. The albino's skin was a vivid turquoise, the same color as Travnicek's. He seemed barely conscious. The android closed the face mask and put a cloth flour sack over Croyd's head. He then wrapped Croyd in the canvas tarpaulin and tied him securely with the nylon cord. Even a person of unusual strength, the android thought, shouldn't be able to fight his way out of something that gave him no freedom of movement.

The android picked up his burden and flew on, spiraling down onto Travnicek's roof next to the skylight. Light shone upward through cracks in the black paint. He reached for the skylight.

"Over here, toaster."

Travnicek was standing naked atop the pointed roof of a water tower on the next building. His voice no longer came from his mouth, which seemed to be sealing up; one of the organs around his neck, one shaped like a speaking trumpet, had taken over that function. His middle-European accent had come through the transformation untouched.

"That's the Croyd person, yes?"

"That's correct." The android took his burden to the next roof and lowered it to a tarred surface still warm from the summer sunlight. Travnicek leaped the thirty feet from the top of the tower and landed effortlessly next to the bound figure. He bent, his organ-lei rustling as it focused on the albino. The sound of chattering teeth came from beneath the flour sack.

"I can see the viruses in there, right through that bag you've got over his head," Travnicek said. "I don't know how just yet, but I can see them. The wild cards are very alive, very eager to enter my body and… subvert my programming." A laugh floated from his speaking-trumpet. A mental chill flowed through the android at the noise, at how inhuman the laugh sounded without a throat to generate it.

Modular Man bent over the trembling figure of Croyd. "I will open the hood and mask. If you lean close, sir, and inhale, you should get another dose of the virus."

Travnicek laughed again. "You're a fool, toaster. A fool." What rose in the android was not despair, but a bleak and hopeless confirmation of despair. "You ordered me to bring him. You wanted to be reinfected."

"That was before I realized what I was." The laugh came again. "I'm strong, I'm youthful, and I perceive the world in ways that no human ever dreamed were possible," He turned his back on the android and walked to the parapet. He stood on the edge of the roof and let the lights of Jokertown play on his azure skin. "This city is so tasty," he said. " I can feel the light, perceive motion and wind." His organ-lei rose toward the sky. "I can hear the stars singing. My senses range from the microscopic to the macrocosmic. Why should I want to lose this?"

"Your genius, sir. The genius that created me. If you don't regain it…"

"What good did it ever do me? What pleasure did it bring?" He laughed. "Years of bad food and no sleep, years of listening to voices babble in my head, years of no friendships, of fucking cheap tarts in alleyways because I didn't dare let them into my workplace…" He gave a snarl and turned to the android.

"It's gonna change, blender. I'm gonna have a real life now. And the first thing, you get me some money."

"Real money. A couple hundred thousand for a start. Just walk into a bank vault and grab it."

The android gazed at the garland of yellow eyes. "Yes, sir," he said.

"And get rid of that Croyd person. Where he won't bother anyone."

"Yes, Sir."