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He put on his golden armor, activated the lancet, and dressed to conceal himself. He didn’t wear the headset; today he didn’t need it.
He felt a little strange, going outside in daylight.
He walked to Lindner’s in his overcoat, attracting a few stares but nothing more. He paused on the sidewalk in front of the store and pressed his face against the window.
It wasn’t a big store, but business seemed reasonably good. There was a hi-fi set in the window bristling with vacuum tubes, a hand-lettered card a
Maybe. Maybe not. It was too soon to say.
He crossed the street to a delicatessen, ordered a ham sandwich and coffee, and occupied a table by the window.
Lindner’s was moderately busy. People came, people went. Any of them might be the intruder. But Billy guessed from the smoky nimbus of the glow last night that the man had come here often. The dust—by this time a few motes still clinging to his shoes or cuffs—could only have been deposited by repeated traffic. Probably he’s an employee, Billy thought. A deliveryman, say, or a sales assistant.
The sandwich was very good. He hadn’t eaten much for days. He bought a second one, a second coffee. He ate slowly and watched the traffic in and out of Lindner’s.
He counted fifteen individuals in and fifteen individuals out, all of them customers, Billy guessed. Then a truck pulled up to the curb and a sweating man in a blue shirt unloaded three cardboard boxes on a dolly. Billy watched with heightened interest: here was a possibility. There was no way to follow the truck, but he made a note of the license number and the name of the distribution company.
And continued to watch.
A little after four o’clock the counterman at the deli approached his table. “You can’t just sit here. This is for paying customers.”
The place was nearly empty. Billy slid a ten-dollar bill across the table and said, “I’d like another coffee. Keep the change.” Thinking, If I wanted to kill you I could do it right now.
The counterman looked at the money, looked at Billy. He frowned and came back with the coffee. Cold coffee in a greasy cup.
“Thank you,” Billy said. “You’re welcome. I think.”
The last customer left Lindner’s at five-fifteen; the store was scheduled to close at six. Billy divided his attention between the storefront and the clock on the deli wall. By six, his focus was intense and feverish.
He watched as the old man—the proprietor, Billy guessed —ambled to the door with a key ring in his hand and turned the sign around to show the word CLOSED.
Billy left his table at the deli and moved into the street.
Warm, su
At Lindner’s, the proprietor—gray-haired, balding, fat— stepped through the door and pawed at his keys. Then paused, turned back, pronounced some word into the shadow of the store, closed the door, and walked off.
Billy’s interest was immediate: the old man had left someone inside.
It was hardly likely the fat proprietor was his target, in any case. He looked too much at home here: too bored, too mindlessly familiar. Bide your time, Billy thought. Wait, watch.
He stood at a newsstand and pretended to examine a copy of Life.
The second man stepped through the door a moment later and locked it with his own key.
This man, Billy thought. His heart speeded up in his chest.
Billy followed at a discreet distance.
He was working on intuition, but he didn’t really doubt this was his prey. Here was a reasonably young man in pale blue jeans, cotton shirt, a pair of sneakers that looked suspiciously anachronistic. Dust in the tread of those shoes, Billy thought. Some dust, maybe, still trapped in the weave of his pants. In the dark, this man would light up like a neon tube. Billy was sure of it.
He lagged back a block or two, following.
The man sensed Billy’s presence. Sometimes this happened with prey. Sometimes it didn’t; there were people who simply didn’t pick up the clues. You could sit next to them on the subway, follow them up an escalator, read over their shoulders; they didn’t notice. More often, a victim would feel some warning instinct; he would walk a little faster, cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. In the end, of course, it didn’t matter; prey was prey. But Billy wanted to be careful now. He couldn’t use the armor too conspicuously and he didn’t want to lose this trail.
He crossed the street, came parallel with his prey, then ducked into a liquor store and paid for a bottle—a squat fifth of whiskey, but any bottle would have done; it was only a prop. He put the paper bag under his arm and hurried out. He spotted his target a block away, heading into a seedy neighborhood on the border of the warehouse district.
The target paused once, turned, and gazed back at Billy.
And what do you see, Billy wondered. Not what Mr. Shank had seen, certainly. Not naked death, not on a su
The prey—the time traveler—nearly walked into the path of a taxi (Billy contemplated this possibility with a mixture of regret and relief); stepped back at the last minute (Billy felt a different mixture of relief, regret); then hurried into the lobby of a tenement building.
Billy noted the address.
Follow him, was Billy’s next thought. Follow him into whatever shabby little room he occupies. Kill him there. Finish with this. His armor wanted a killing.
Then Billy hesitated—
And the world dimmed.
Dimming was how he thought of it later. It felt like a dimming —literally, as if someone had switched off a lightbulb in his head.
He was suddenly Billy Gargullo, farmboy, standing on a dirty street on the Lower East Side in the antiquated past, the words kill him still echoing in his head like the chorus of an obscene song. He thought of the man he had followed and felt a hot rush of guilt.
Suddenly Billy wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t a hunter; his senses weren’t keen. He felt opaque, thick, frightened, leaden-footed. His clothes were too heavy; he started to sweat.
His armor had malfunctioned.
Billy fled.
It wasn’t a problem he could run away from. But ru
He sought shelter in a movie theater on Forty-second Street, where lonely men masturbated in the balconies or gratified each other in the toilet stalls. Other nights, he had come here looking for victims. But that irony was lost on him now. Billy huddled into a torn seat, terrified in the flickering movie light.
His life might be over.
Maybe it had been a bad bargain all along. Billy had seized the opportunity when it was offered: leap back into the fabulous past, out of the Storm Zone, battle zone, Infantry, mortal fear; seal the exits and check them; live a modest, concealed life with his armor a private and occasional indulgence.
Oh, but Billy (some fraction of himself had objected even then), the armor won’t last forever, there are no replacements where you’re going, no parts no labor no repair. He envisioned a searing, unquenchable, and ultimately deadly Need.
But that might not come (Billy had told himself). Who could tell how long the golden armor might last? Out of combat, preserved, groomed, polished, maintained, diagnosed, coddled—maybe it would last forever. Or as long as Billy lived. The power packs were good for that.