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He increased his speed till the wind turned to a roar in his ears. Infra-red receptors snapped on. The guns on his shoulders spun and fired test bursts at the sky. His radar quested out, touching rooftops, streets, air traffic, his machine mind comparing the radar images with those generated earlier, searching for discrepancies.
There seemed to be something wrong with the radar image of the Empire State Building. A large object was climbing up its side, and there seemed to be several small objects, about the size of people, orbiting the golden spire. The android altered course toward midtown and accelerated.
A forty-five-foot ape was climbing the building. Broken shackles hung from its wrists. A blonde woman screamed for help from one of the ape’s fists. Flying people rocketed around the creature, and by the time the android arrived the cloud of orbiting heroes had grown dense, spinning like electrons around a hairy, snarling nucleus. The air resounded with the sound of rockets, wings, force fields, propellers, eructations. Guns, wands, ray projectors, and less identifiable weapons were brandished in the direction of the ape. None were fired.
The ape, with a cretinous determination, continued to climb the building. Windows crackled as he drove his toes through them. Faint shrieks of alarm were heard with each crash.
The android matched speeds with a woman with talons, feathers, and a thirty-foot wingspan.
"The second goddam ape escape this year," she said. "Always he grabs a blonde and always he climbs the Empire State Building. Why a fucking blonde, I want to know?"
The android observed that the winged woman had lustrous brown hair. "Why isn't anyone doing anything?" he asked.
"If we shoot the ape, he might crush the girl, or drop her. Usually the godalmighty Great and Powerful fucking Turtle just pries the chimp's fingers apart and wafts the girl to the ground, and then we all cut loose. The ape regenerates, so we can't hurt him permanently. But the Turtle isn't here. He's probably shacked up with some bimbo in that shell of his."
"I think I see the problem now."
"Hey. By the way. What's wrong with your head?"
The android didn't answer. Instead, with a crackle, he turned on his insubstantiality flux-field. He altered course and swooped toward the ape. It growled at him, baring its teeth. The android smelled rank breath. He sailed into the middle of the hand that held the blonde girl, receiving an impressionist image of wild pale hair, tears, pleading blue eyes.
"Holy fuck," said the girl.
Modular Man rotated his insubstantial X-ray laser within the ape's hand and fired a full-strength burst down the length of its arm. The ape reacted as if stung, opening his hand. The blonde tumbled out. The ape's eyes widened in horror.
The android turned off his flux-field, seized the girl in his now-substantial arms, and flew away.
The ape's eyes grew even more terrified. It had escaped nine times in the last thirty years and by now it knew what to expect.
Behind him, as he flew, the android heard a barrage of explosions, crackles, shots, rockets, hissing rays, screams, thuds, and futile roars. There was a final quivering moan, and then the android’s radar detected the shadow of a long-armed giant tumbling down the façade of the skyscraper. There was a sizzle, and a net of cold blue flame appeared over Fifth Avenue; the ape fell into it, bounced once, and then was borne, unconscious and smoldering, toward its home at Central Park Zoo.
The android looked at the streets below for video cameras. He began to descend.
“Would you mind hovering for a little while?" the blonde said. "If you're going to land in front of the media, I'd like to fix my makeup first, okay?"
"Okay." He began to orbit above the cameras. They pointed up at him. He could see his reflection in their distant lenses.
"My name is Cyndi," the blonde said. "I'm an actress. I just got here from Minnesota a couple days ago. This might be my big break."
"Mine, too," said the android. She smiled at him. “By the way " he added, "I think the ape showed excellent taste."
"You're pretty good looking, yourself," she said. "But if you're gonna go on the stage, you'd better do something about that dome of yours."
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"Not bad, not bad," Travnicek mused, watching on his television at a tape of the android, after a brief interview with the press, rising into the heavens with Cyndi in his arms. He was particularly pleased with the android's deadpan announcement that his creator "had equipped me for this and other eventualities.”
He turned to his creation. "Why the fucking hell did you have your hands over your head the whole time?"
"My radar dome. I'm getting self-conscious. Everyone asks me what's wrong with my head."
"A blushingly self-conscious multi-purpose defensive attack system," Travnicek said. "Jesus Christ. Just what the world needs.”
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© 1998 by Walter Jon Williams
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