A Bridge of Years

But Tom knew by the way she looked at him, and then away, that she was confused about his role in all this.

A confusion he shared. Not that he might have committed the crime but that Millstein’s death might be co

The police cruisers began to pull away from the curb; the crowd dispersed. A raft of cloud had moved across the sky from the northwest and the night was suddenly cooler. A wind whipped around the corner from Avenue B.

Rain before morning, Tom thought.

He thought about the walk back to the apartment, dangerous in these night streets.

He felt a hand on his shoulder … and spun around, startled, expecting a cop or something worse, and was shocked again:

“Hey, Tom,” Doug Archer said. “We have to get out of here.”

Tom took a step back and drew a deep breath. Yes, anything was possible. Yes, this was Doug Archer, from Belltower in the state of Washington at the end of the 1980s, as incongruous in this dirty street as a Greek amphora or an Egyptian urn.

Doug Archer, who seemed to have some idea what was going on. Now there’s a neat trick, Tom thought.

He managed, “How did you find me?”

“Long story.” Archer tilted his head as if he were listening to something. “Tom, we have to leave now. We can talk in the car. Please?”

Tom took a last look at the building where Lawrence Millstein had died. An ambulance pulled away from the curb, headed uptown. Joyce was gone.

He nodded.

Archer drew an oversize Avis keytag out of his pocket.

Tom felt but didn’t understand the urgency as Archer hustled him into a boxy rental Ford and pulled away from the curb. The heat had broken and the rain came down in a sudden, gusty wash. Dawn was still hours away.

They drove to an all-night deli in the Village and ducked inside.

“A man was killed,” Tom said. He was still trying to grasp the fact of Millstein’s death. “Somebody I knew. Somebody I got drunk with.”

“Could have been you,” Archer said. “You’re lucky it wasn’t.” He added, “That’s why we have to go home.”

Tom shook his head. He felt too weary to frame a reasonable response. He looked at Archer across the table: Doug Archer in a crewcut and a starched shirt and black leather shoes, his sneakers presumably abandoned in 1989. “How do you know all this?” Millstein dead and Doug Archer in the street outside: not a coincidence. “I mean, what are you doing here?”

“I owe you an explanation,” Archer said. “I sure as hell hope we have time for it.”

An hour ticked by on the wall clock while Archer told him about Ben Collier, the time-traveling custodian.

Much of what Archer told him was barely plausible. Tom believed it, however. He had been numbed to the miraculous a long time ago.

At the end of it he cradled his head on his hands and struggled to put this information into some kind of order. “You came here to take me back?”

“I can’t ‘take’ you anywhere. But yeah, I think it would be the wise thing to do.”

“Because of this so-called marauder.”

“He knows about you and he obviously means to kill you.”

It was a hypothetical threat; Tom was impatient. “The tu

“But he can find you! Jesus, Tom, he very nearly did find you—tonight.”

“You think he’s the one who killed Lawrence?” Tom was dazed enough to be startled by the idea.

“It would be fucking near suicidal,” Archer said, “to doubt it.”

“It’s a supposition—”

“It’s a fact, Tom. He was there. He was close by when I found you. Another five minutes, ten minutes, the street empties out, you turn down some alley, he would have had a clean shot at you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Well, but, that’s the thing. I can.”

Tom looked blank, felt apprehensive.

“Simple,” Archer said. “This guy took out three temporal depots, each one stocked with machine bugs eager to defend it. He killed the cybernetics with an EM pulse weapon. His armor was hardened against the pulse and the machine bugs weren’t. Hardly any cybernetics survived—unless they were also protected by his armor.”

“How could that be?”

“They were in the air he was breathing. Little bitty ones the size of a virus—you know about those?”

“I know about those,” Tom allowed. “But if they’re inside him, how come they can’t stop him?”

“They’re like drones without a hive. They’re lost and they don’t have instructions. But they send out a little narrow-bandwidth data squirt, a sort of homing signal. I can pick up on that.”

“You can?”

Archer turned to display a plug in one ear, something like a miniaturized hearing aid. “Ben had his cybernetics whip this up for me. I can tell when he’s inside a radius of eight, nine hundred yards … reception permitting. You too, by the way.”

“They’re inside me?”

“Completely benign. Don’t get your shorts in a knot, Tom. Maybe they saved your life. I drove around Manhattan for three days, Battery Park to Washington Heights, on the off chance I’d come within range.” He cocked his head. “You sound kind of like a telephone. A dial tone. The marauder sounds more like a dentist’s drill.”

“You’re telling me he was there at Larry Millstein’s apartment building.”

“That’s why I was in such an all-fired hurry to leave.”

“He must have known I was coming.”

“I suppose so. But—”

“No,” Tom said. “Let me think about this.”

It was hard to think at all. If Archer was correct, he had been standing a few yards away from a man who wanted to murder him. Who had murdered Millstein. And if the marauder had been waiting for him, had known he was coming, then Millstein must have cooperated with the marauder.

They had hurried to the apartment because Millstein phoned Joyce at Mario’s.

The marauder knew about Mario’s. The marauder knew about Tom. Maybe the marauder knew his address. Certainly the marauder knew about Joyce.

Who had left with a cop. Who might be headed home by now. Where the marauder might be waiting. Tom spilled his coffee, standing up.

Archer tried to soothe him. “What they’ll likely do is question her as long as she’s willing to sit still. She’s probably giving a statement to some sleepy cop as we speak. Safe and sound.”

Tom hoped so. But how long would she be willing to answer questions?

She might have a few questions of her own.

He couldn’t erase his memory of the hallway outside Lawrence Millstein’s door. All that blood.

“Drive me home,” he told Archer. “We’ll meet her there.”

Archer raised his eyebrows at the word “home” but fumbled in his pocket for the keys.

They drove into the narrow streets of the Lower East Side. The city looked abandoned, Tom thought, pavements and storefronts glazed with rain and steam rising out of the sewers. “Here,” he said, and Archer pulled up at the curb outside the building.

The rain was loud on the roof of this old car.

Tom reached for the door handle; Archer put a hand on his wrist.

Tom said, “Is he near here?”

“I don’t think so. But he could be around a corner, half a block away. Listen, what if she’s not home?”

“Then we wait for her.”

“How long?” Tom shrugged. “And if she is here?”

“We take her with us.”

“What—back to Belltower?”

“She’ll be safe there … safer, anyhow.”