deep in his computer mind. He began talking quickly, hoping to distract his inventor from the pictures.
"As far as the bag lady goes, I could try the refugee centers, but it might take a long time. My files tell me there are normally twenty thousand homeless people in New York, and now there are an uncountable number of refugees from Jersey."
"Piss in a chalice!" exclaimed Travnicek, in Geiman. The android felt another wince coming on. Travnicek gaped at the television in surprise.
"You're screwing that actress lady!" he said. "That Cyndi What's-her-name!" The android resigned himself to what was about to come.
"That's correct;" he said.
"You're just a goddamn toaster," Travnicek said. "What the hell made you think you could fuck?"
"You gave me the equipment," the android said. "And you implanted emotions in me. And on top of that, you made me good-looking."
"Huh." Travnicek turned his eyes from Modular Man to the video and back again. "I gave you the equipment so you could pass as a human if you had to. And I just gave you the emotions so you could understand the enemies of society. I didn't think you'd do anything." He tossed his cigarette butt to the floor. A leer crossed his face. "Was it fun?" he asked. "It was pleasant, yes."
"Your blond chippie seemed to be having a good time." Travnicek cackled and reached for the controls. " I want to start this party at the beginning."
"Didn't you want to look at the bag lady again?"
"First things first. Get me an Urquell." He looked up as a thought occurred to him. "Do we have any popcorn?"
"No!" The android tossed his abrupt answer over his shoulder.
Modular Man brought the beer and watched while Travnicek had his first sip. The Czech looked up in annoyance. "I don't like the way you're looking at me," he said. The android considered this. "Would you prefer me to look at you some other way?" he asked.
Travnicek turned red. "Go stand in the corner, microwave-oven-that-fucks!" he bellowed. "Turn your goddamn head away, video-unit-that-fucks!"
For the rest of the afternoon, while his creation stood in a corner of the loft, Travnicek watched the video. He enjoyed himself enormously. He watched the best parts several times, cackling at what he saw. Then, slowly, his laughter dimmed. A cold, uncertain feeling crept up the back of his neck. He began casting glances at the stolid figure of the android. He turned off the vid unit, dropped his cigarette butt in the Urquell bottle, then lit another.
The android was showing a surprising degree of independence. Travnicek reviewed elements of his programming, concentrating on the ETCETERA file. Travnicek's abstract of human emotion had been gleaned from a variety of expert sources ranging from Freud to Dr. Spock. It had been an intellectual challenge for Travnicek to do the programmingtransforming the illogicalities of human behavior into the cold rhetoric of a program. He'd performed the task during his second year at Texas A&M, when he'd barely gone out of his quarters the whole year and had known he had to set himself a large task in order to keep from being driven crazy by the lunatic environment of a university that seemed an embodiment of the collective unconscious fantasies of Stonewall Jackson and Albert Speer. He'd barely been at A&M for ten minutes before he'd known it was a mistake the crop-haired undergraduates with their uniforms, boots, and sabers reminded him too much of the SS who had left Travnicek barely alive beneath the bodies of his family' at Lidice, not to mention the Soviet and Czech security forces that had followed the Germans. Travnicek knew if he was going to survive in Texas, he had to find something massive to work on lest his memories eat him alive.
Travnicek had never been particularly interested in human psychology as such-passion, he had long ago decided, was not only foolish but genuinely boring, a waste of time. But putting passion into a program, yes, that was interesting.
He could barely remember that period now. How many months had he spent in his creative trance, a channel for his own deepest spirit? What had he wrought during that time? What the hell was in ETCETERA?
For a moment a tremor of fear went through Travnicek. The ghost of Victor Frankenstein's creation loomed for a moment in his mind. Was a rebellion on the part of the android possible? Could he evolve hostile passions against his creator? But no-there were overriding imperatives that Travnicek had hardwired into