Dealer's Choice w-11

by George R. R. Martin

  Every screen was full of death.

  “God,” Danny whispered from the floor beside him.

  The whole stem section of the New Jersey was gone. What was left of her had started to settle. Smoke and steam rose hissing from the twisted steel amidships as the seawater poured in.

  Tom kept his eyes on the screens, but it was hard to focus. He could feel Danny pressed up against his leg. There wasn’t much room inside the shell. He was acutely, awkwardly aware of her, the warmth of her skin against him, the smell of her shampoo. Only last month, he had let Dr. Tachyon inside the shell. Tachyon had been stuck in a pregnant female body at the time, courtesy of the jumpers and his grandson Blaise, and he spent most of his time alternately shouting orders and recoiling hysterically every time Tom brushed against him. Her. That had been pretty weird, but she had still been Tach, and Tom had known Tach for a long, long time. It was different with Danny. She was almost a stranger. Not to mention being a woman. A real woman. All the way through.

  A dozen small tornadoes danced around the New Jersey,

  howling, smashing into her armored sides like slam-dancers. Tom scanned his screens, searching for Mistral. She was easy to spot. She floated a hundred feet above the wreck, her huge white cape filled with wind, all her attention on the New Jersey as she choreographed her slam-dance for cyclones and waterspouts. “There’s the wind bitch,” Tom said. “So where’s the fucking android?”

  Charred bodies floated on the whitecaps, bobbing up and down. A few sailors were still struggling in the water, trying to swim, vanishing as huge waves broke over their heads and pulled them down. The rest of the Task Force was fighting its way toward the sinking battleship. The steady chatter of machine guns and the pounding of antiaircraft fire mingled with the banshee roar of Mistral’s winds.

  “Do something,” Danny urged. “You have to help them.”

  Tom felt sick and helpless. His insides had gone weak with fear. There was nothing he could do for the men who were dead or dying. Once, several lifetimes ago, the Turtle had actually lifted the New Jersey with his teke. He’d got it clear out of the water, and held it up for almost thirty seconds with the power of his mind. Maybe he could keep her afloat for a little while. But not while she was under attack. That was suicide.

  “We got to know what the fuck we’re up against,” he said. “Where’s Modular Man? Who blew up the fucking ship?”

  His shell was hovering hundreds of feet above the battle. The New Jersey had looked like a toy in a bathtub before he’d zoomed in on it. There was no fog here, almost twenty miles from the Rox. Tom had put the afternoon sun behind him, a trick he remembered from the comics he’d read as a kid. Jetboy always came at them from out of the sun.

  “There,” Danny said, pointing. “That light.”

  Tom saw it too. A glowing red streak darting back and forth across the deck of the sinking ship, too fast to follow. "Pulse,” he said grimly. “Shit.” There was nothing he could do against Pulse, and Mistral had already kicked his ass once today. “I don’t like these odds,” he told Danny.

  “The ship can’t take much more of this battering,” Danny said. “They can’t even use the lifeboats. The storm will smash them. Do something!”

  Suddenly the bright light flashed off to the north. It was gone in the blink of an eye. It took a moment for it to sink in. “He left,” Tom said. He sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. “Pulse left.”

  Danny was way ahead of him. “Modman!” she cried. “There!”

  Tom glimpsed something in his peripheral vision, turned, saw him. Modular Man. Weaving in and out among bursting shells.

  There was no time. The antiaircraft fire was keeping him busy, but Modman had to know the Turtle was there. Hiding in the sun didn’t mean jack shit to the android’s radar.

  Tom zoomed in, reached down, and grabbed.

  Midway between a zig and a zag, Modular Man jerked to a sudden full stop and hung helplessly in midair.

  The shell dropped toward him. Tom kept one nervous eye on Mistral. She was well below, winds howling around her. Three miniature tornadoes were rushing toward the New Jersey. Mistral still hadn’t seen him.

  Modular Man had managed to wrench himself around in the Turtle’s telekinetic grasp. The android was hellacious strong. Sweat was popping out on Tom’s brow as he fought to hold him. “I don’t want to fight you,” Modular Man shouted up.

  “GOOD,” the Turtle replied. “CAN YOU SAY, I SURRENDER? I KNEW YOU COULD…”

  The android must not have watched Mr. Rogers. He just looked vaguely puzzled. “My programming does not permit me to surrender, except to preserve my creator’s life.”

  “He told me before, none of this is his idea,” Danny said. “He’s being compelled.”

  “It was Pulse,” Modman said. “He must have ignited the ship’s magazine. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “TELL THAT TO THOSE SONS OF BITCHES IN THE WATER.”

  Modular Man seemed to thrum as he fired on all cylinders, trying to break free. He didn’t move a foot. The guns mounted on his shoulders swung around on the shell. He had a machine gun on his right shoulder and some kind of high-tech laser or maser or taser cannon on his left.

  “GIVE UP,” Turtle said. “I’LL REPROGRAM YOU.”

  “I cannot permit my programming to be altered,” Modular Man said. The taser swept across the shell in a smooth traverse; hidden video-cams fried like popcorn in a microwave. The machine gun was right behind it. Tom heard bullets whining off his armor plate. Three of his screens went dark, then a fourth, a fifth.

  “BAD IDEA,” Tom said. He bent the barrel of the machine gun back on itself, then ripped off the taser and sent it spinning. Sparks arced from the hole in Modman’s shoulder. “LAST CHANCE.”

  Modular Man had nothing to say. Danny was shouting something in his ear. Tom barely heard her. He wrapped invisible hands around the android’s ankles. “MAKE A WISH,” he said to Danny. She clutched at his arm, frantic. Finally he looked over, just in time to catch a glimpse of blue and white on the screen behind her.

  Then the tornado turned his shell into a tiddledywink.

  Up was down, down was up, and everything was spinning. Tom’s harness held him in place, but Danny was slammed up against the ceiling, then down, then up again. She tumbled across Tom’s lap and crashed into the big main screen. The picture tube exploded. Flying glass filled the cabin. Danny cried out. Somehow Tom managed to grab her arm as she went by. He pulled her down against him, hard, and held her tight as the shell went end over end.

  It seemed like an eternity before he finally got control again. The shell jerked to a sudden stop. It trembled in the air. Tom had lost all sense of where the fuck he was. Danny was in his arms, groaning. “My leg … shit… I think I broke my leg.”

  There was no time to worry about that now. More than half of his screens were out. He looked at the others, quickly. Modman was a distant speck, trailing smoke as he fled. He must have held on, wrenched something loose when the wind hit him and Mistral … he looked from screen to screen, frantic… there she was, coming alter him… riding the wind… her cape rippling like the sails of a clipper ship… smiling…

  All of a sudden, Tom wasn’t afraid.

  All of a sudden, he was angry.

  He thought of a bubble.

  Mistral’s cape deflated like a leaky balloon. It wasn’t until she began to fall that she realized something had gone wrong. She looked behind her, below her, not quite understanding what was happening.

  The shell fell toward her like a dive-bomber.

  “Yes!” Danny said.

  Mistral tumbled helplessly. Her cloak was a limp rag now, useless as a torn parachute. Far below, her tornadoes began to dissipate. Tom turned his bubble into shrink-wrap, a telekinetic second skin that gripped her as tightly as her costume. The sea rose up to smash her.

  Ten feet above the water, Tom jerked her to a sudden stop. Mistral glared at him. A wind came from nowhere and brushed
against his armor. But it was attenuated, feeble.

  “NOT THIS TIME.” Tom told her.

  Mistral’s mouth opened wordlessly. She was gasping, struggling for breath. His teke was shutting off all her air.

  He turned her upside down, gave her a good look at the bodies floating in the water below her. One of the men was still struggling feebly, clinging to the corpse of a buddy. He didn’t seem to know how to swim.

  “JUMP,” he told her.

  Feebly, she tried to shake her head.

  “OKAY. THEN DIE.” He tightened his grip. His teke closed around her like a vise, squeezing the breath out of her.

  Danny had gone pale. “Jesus, are you really going to kill her?” she asked nervously.

  Tom didn’t know the answer.

  Mistral’s pretty face was turning blue. It matched her costume. Torn squeezed harder. She was fighting his teke with everything she had.

  And then she wasn’t fighting him at all.

  Tom released her as soon as she went limp, caught her gently as she began to fall, lifted her atop his shell. He could see her chest moving weakly.

  He felt Danny grab his arm. “Look,” she said. Down in the water, the man who’d been hugging the corpse suddenly kicked free and swam for shore. His strokes were strong and sure. For a moment Tom considered pushing him under.

  “The ship,” Danny said urgently. “I can feel the deck tilting under me. It’s going down!”

  Tom sighed. The Turtle lifted slowly into the air and moved toward the foundering New Jersey to do whatever he could do. Below him, the swimmer raced toward shore.

  The scream startled the hell out of Ray, because it came from behind. He whirled to see the other team members clustered around Danny. She’d managed to cut short her agonized shout, but she was writhing on the tunnel floor, clutching her leg in obvious torment.

  Ray ran back to the group, pushing past Battle and Boyd, and knelt by her head. Her mouth was clamped shut and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She wasn’t bleeding, but she sure as hell was in pain.

  “What happened?” Ray asked.

  “I don’t know,” Boyd responded excitedly. “She was walking in front of me all right, then she suddenly screamed, fell, and grabbed her leg.”

  “It’s… o… kay,” Danny ground out between clenched lips. “I can deal… with it. It’s not… my … pain.”

  “Whose is it?” Ray asked.

  “Sister’s … broken leg.”

  “You feel everything your sisters feel?”

  Danny nodded. “Once … I fell out of a tree … I was eight, nine, playing hooky… broke my arm. The other me was at school, only her arm broke too, all by itself.”

  “Christ,” Ray said. That was frightening. “You mean every time one of your sisters gets hurt.

  “Not every time,” Danny said. “Sometimes … mostly not, but if we’re real close, or if the pain is real bad, or real sudden, and I can’t try and dissociate… distance myself… most times, I feel the injury, but that’s all.” Her fingers massaged her twisted leg. “Nothing feels broken this time. I think I’m okay.”

  “Which is it, Corporal?” Battle wanted to know. “We can’t wait forever while you decide whether or not your leg is broken.”

  “Give her a minute,” Ray snapped.

  “I’m okay.” She took a deep breath. “I can go on. It’s under control.”

  Ray gave her a hand up. “Lean on me,” he said, “if you have to.”

  She flashed him a smile. “Okay, tough guy.”

  Travnicek inspected the torn hip joint, the alloy socket with its bright edges of torn metal, the burn, melted, and torn contractile plastic with its fine web of conducting wires.

  Down in flames, Modular Man thought. Like a World War I fighter ace.

  The android had managed to stop the shorting with some swift rerouting of his inner electronics. The medical staff, a few overworked jokers, only a few with medical training, could think of nothing to do other than supply him with a crutch.

  “I thought you were learning how to be a winner, Apple Mac,” Travnicek said. “A shooter. You disappoint the shit out of me.” The screams of a wounded patient echoed from the stone walls of the infirmary. One of the few jokers with medical training ran to the patient’s aid.

  At least there were plenty of drugs down here to keep the patients quiet. The android had never seen so many drugs in his life.

  “Burying Snotman was clever of you,” Travnicek went on, “but I expected better when you dealt with that flying terrapin.”

  Can you repair me?”

  “Hah! Of course.” Travnicek waved a hand; cilia sang through the air. “When I get around to it. After this little adventure is over.”

  Modular Man’s heart sank. Travnicek was lying, and they both knew it.

  “I don’t know how long I can go on fighting this way,” the android said. “Perhaps we should evacuate.”

  Travnicek paused, held up a hand. Something pulsed under his blue, hairless scalp. His sensory organs unfolded.

  “Tub-of-Lard is doing something,” he said. “Gotta go, toaster.”

  He sprang away, jumping up to run on the wall when someone got in his way. Modular Man rose from the infirmary bed — there wasn’t anything they could do for him here — and tentatively put his weight on his remaining foot. He rewove his programming to compensate for his altered balance and took a careful hop.

  He could move faster by walking on his hands, he realized. And faster still just by levitating and flying under the power of his flux generators.

  The screaming patient — disemboweled by shrapnel, the android now saw — fell silent as his joker nurse pumped him full of rapture.

  The android glanced up, saw Patchwork. She still wore her camouflage uniform and helmet, but had left her pack and firearms behind.

  “They told me you were wounded,” she said.

  He looked into her anxious gold-flecked eyes. “I lost a leg.”

  She stepped back, looked at him. She was breathing hard; it seemed as if she’d run all the way from the Iron Tower.

  “How bad is it?” she said. “You’re not suffering the way a human would.”

  “Take my word for it,” Modular Man said. “I’m not a happy individual.”

  “Your… creator?” She waved an arm in the direction of the absent Travnicek. “He’s not concerned?”

  “He seems determined to fight to the last Bloat.”

  Patchwork looked at him soberly. “And to the last android?”

  “Since Bloat seems determined to put me between himself and danger, that would seem very likely.”

  “Isn’t he — Travni —”

  “Travnicek.”

  “Yes. Isn’t he concerned about how to get off the Rox? Or does he think we’re going to win?”

  “He’s not thinking about what happens next. I think he’s intoxicated by Bloat.”

  “That’s a new reaction to the governor.”

  The disemboweled patient began to moan. He sounded as if he were working his way up to orgasm.

  “When I was first created, I wanted to try everything,” Modular Man said. “Every drink, every dessert, every experience. Sort of like Travnicek is doing now.”

  “You tried every woman, from what I hear.”

  “That too. But I didn’t put others in danger.”

  The disemboweled patient screamed in ecstasy. Patchwork’s face screwed itself into an expression of distaste. “Can we leave? I don’t think they’re helping you here, and this place isn’t doing me any good, either.”

  She reached out, took his hand to help him balance.

  He found himself not wanting to tell her he could levitate.

  He left the crutch behind, leaning against his bed.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in the Iron Tower?” Modular Man asked.

  “Things are pretty chaotic,” Patchwork said. “The governor’s rebuilding the fortifications and had better things to do than t
o see if everyone’s at their station. Nobody told my own squad to expect me, so they’re not missing me. Last I looked, Bloat’s officers were rounding up people to reoccupy the Jersey Gate and Liberty Park. Considering what happened to the last batch, they’ll probably have to drive them over the causeway with whips.”

  Patchwork and Modular Man had found refuge in a room off one of the tunnels under the Rox. It was one of those odd places where Bloat’s imagination had failed: the walls were scabbed and fused, and the room was used for storing supplies, mostly huge blue-plastic-wrapped bales of drugs. There were also boxes of ammunition and grenades, the latter labeled WP, for white phosphorus.

  Modular Man and Patchwork sat side-by-side on a package of rapture worth about two million dollars on the street. He hadn’t as yet let go of her hand. The android touched the bale with his free hand, drew fingers down the gritty plastic. “So the stories about the Rox being full of drug dealers are true,” he said. “I thought they might be exaggerations.”

  “All the stories about the Rox are true,” Patchwork said. “We’re quite a little enterprise here.”

  “Tell me the story again about how you’re all a bunch of noble idealists fighting for your freedom.”

  “Some of the jokers are idealists. And some of them hurt so bad they need drugs just to get through the day.”

  “In quantities like this? Joker idealism seems rather pliable.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Well. I was just in it for the red Ferrari, myself. After I kicked the big H, other drugs never had much of an attraction.”

  “You were a heroin addict?”

  “Back when I was twelve, yeah. My father got me onto the stuff.”

  “Your father was an addict?”

  “No. He just thought the junk would make me easier to control.”

  Modular Man looked at her for a moment in thoughtful silence. Her cheeks flushed slightly and she turned away.

  “You’re so much older than I am,” he said. “I’m something less than five years old, and —”

  She laughed. “You’re going to ask me for wisdom? I got talked into going onto the Rox, and I never even figured out that once I got here there was nowhere to drive the Ferrari. Which I never got anyway.”