in the trash. "And I got in on the second try."
You'll never know why, Hubbard thought. You'll never know that Amun was using your membership as a tool against Balsam, that he wanted the former Master, with his irrational prejudices and old man's ways and inherited mystical mumbo jumbo, out of the way entirely. How he used the decision against Black to convince Kim Toy, Red, and Revenant that Balsam had to go. And then there was the fire at the old temple, stage-managed by Amun somehow, and Amun had saved his own people from the flames, and Balsam and all his followers had died.
Hubbard remembered the explosion, the fire, the pain, the way his flesh blackened in the blowtorch flame. He'd screamed for help, seeing the giant astral figure of Amun leading his own disciples out, and if Kim Toy hadn't insisted on going back for him he would have died then and there. Amun hadn't trusted him fully, not then. Hubbard had just joined the Order, and Amun hadn't had the chance to play with him yet, to enter into his brain and make him cringe, to play the endless mind games and twist him into knots with a long series of humiliations . . . Yes, he thought, that's what Amun is like. I know, because I'm that way too.
There was a knock on the door. Hubbard admitted Judas, who was carrying the stolen tranquilizer gun in its red metal case with its OFFICIAL USE ONLY stickers. "Whew. What a bitch. I thought Captain McPherson would never let me outta there."
He and Black took the large black air pistol from the case, then put a dart in the chamber. "It should put her out for hours," Black said confidently. "I'll give her some food, then shoot her from the door when she's eating." He tucked the pistol into the back waistband of his trousers, took a paper plate of cold pizza from the refrigerator, and walked to the bag lady's door. He unlocked the heavy padlock and cautiously opened the door. Hubbard and Matthias unconsciously took a step back, half-expecting Black to vanish into whatever spacetime singularity inhabited the bag . . . but Black's expression changed, and he poked his head into the room, glanced right and left. When he stepped back into the hallway, his expression was baffled.
"She's gone," he said. "She's not in the room anywhere."
Modular Man looked at the drinks lined up in the bar before him. Irish coffee, martini, margarita, boilermaker, Napoleon brandy. He seriously wanted to try new tastes right now, and wondered if getting his parts crushed by the bag lady's gizmo had wakened in him a sense of mortality.
"I am beginning to realize," said the android raising the Irish coffee to his lips, "that my creator is a hopeless sociopath. "
Cyndi considered this. "if you don't mind some theology, I think that this just puts you in the same boat with the rest of us."
"He's beginning to-well, never mind what he's beginning to do. But I think the man is sick." The android wiped cream from his upper lip.
"You could run away. Last I heard, slavery was illegal. He's not even paying you minimum wage, I suppose."
"I'm not a person. I'm not human. Machines do not have rights."
"That doesn't mean you have to do everything he says, Mod Man."
The android shook his head. "It won't work. I have hardwired inhibitions against disobeying him, disobeying his instructions, or revealing his identity in any way."
Cyndi seemed startled. "He's thorough, I'll hand that to him." She looked at Modular Man carefully. "Why'd he build you, anyway?"
"He was going to mass-market me and sell me to the military. But I think he's having so much fun playing with me that he may never get around to selling my rights to the Pentagon."
"I'd be thankful for that if I were you."
"I wouldn't know." The android reached for another drink, then showed Cyndi the Polaroid of the bag lady.
"I need to find this person."
"She looks like a bag lady."
"She is a bag lady."
She laughed. "Haven't you been listening to the broadcasts? You know how many thousands of those women there are in this town? There's a recession going on out there. Winos, runaways, people out of a job or out of luck, people who got kicked out of mental institutions because of state cutbacks on funding . . . The shelters give Swarm refugees precedence over street people. Jesus-and on a night like this, too.