The creature had stopped moving. It was watching them, he thought—perhaps with the two opaque spots which occupied the position of eyes; perhaps in some other fashion.
This was terrifying—bearable only because the creature was utterly motionless.
Tom counted silently to ten, then backed up the piled rubble an inch or so.
The creature’s attention followed him. But only that.
Joyce looked at him. He could tell by the grip of her hand that she was deeply frightened but still in control. He whispered, “Back up slowly. If it moves, stand still.”
He didn’t doubt the creature’s immense power; he felt it all around him, felt it in the radiant heat on his exposed skin.
Joyce nodded tightly and they began to inch up the rubble and out of the tunnel. It occurred to Tom that this was the instinctive response to a dangerous large animal, no doubt wildly inappropriate here. He stared into the creature’s eyespots and knew—absolutely wordlessly—that its interest in them was intense but momentary; that it could kill them if it wished; that it hadn’t decided yet. This wasn’t the random indecision of an animal but something much more focused, more intimate. A judgment.
Gazing into that pale blankness, he felt naked and small.
They had almost reached the welcome darkness of the basement when the creature vanished.
Later, he argued with Joyce about the way it had disappeared. Tom maintained that it simply blinked out of existence; Joyce said it had turned sideways in some way she couldn’t describe—“Turned some corner we couldn’t see.”
They agreed that its absence was as sudden, absolute, and soundless as its appearance.
Joyce scrambled through the dark basement, pulling Tom up the stairs. He felt her trembling. This is my fault, he thought.
He made her wait while he put the hasp of the lock back on the wooden door. He fumbled in his pocket for the three screws and the dime to drive them with, sank the first two home and then dropped the last. Joyce said, “Christ, Tom!” —but held a match in one unsteady hand while he groped on his knees. The screw had rolled under the edge of the door and for one sinking moment he thought he’d have to pry off the hasp a second time to get the last screw back, which would be next to impossible in this dark bad-smelling basement full of who-knows-what-kind-of-impossible-monsters— but then he caught the head of the screw with his fingernail and managed to retrieve it.
He was as meticulous as his shaking hands would allow. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been here—though maybe that was impossible. But the idea of one more barrier between himself and the tunnel, no matter how flimsy, was reassuring.
He tightened the last screw and pocketed the dime. They climbed the stairs toward the lobby, Joyce leading now.
He pictured the top door, the one he’d opened with a credit card and Joyce’s key. A terrifying thought: what if it had slipped shut? What if the bolt had slammed home and he couldn’t open it again?
Then he saw the crack of light from the lobby, saw Joyce groping for the door, saw it open; and they tumbled out together, unsteady in the light, holding each other.
Twelve
Billy’s nerves were steadier by the time he got home, and for two days after that he resisted his urgent need for the armor.
He told himself he needed time to think; that there was nothing to be gained by acting impulsively.
The truth was, he feared the armor almost as much as he feared the violation of the tunnel.
Feared it as much as he wanted it.
The days grew long, hot, sullen-bright and empty. His apartment was sparsely furnished; he owned a sofa, a brass bed, a Westinghouse TV set and an alarm clock. He left the windows open and a warm breeze lifted the skirts of the white lace curtains. Through the endless afternoon Billy listened to the ticking of the clock and the sound of traffic on the street below.
Listened to the hollow keening of his own unbearable hunger.
He was afraid of his armor because he needed it.
He would never stop needing it … but here was a fact Billy didn’t like to think about: the armor was getting old.
Billy did all the maintenance he could. He kept the armor clean and dry; he ran all the built-in diagnostics. But there was no way to repair any serious damage in this extravagant but technically primitive era. Already some of the more complex subroutines had begun to function sporadically or not at all. Eventually the armor’s main functions would begin to falter, despite their multiple redundancies—and Billy would be left with his fierce hunger, his terrible need, and no way to satisfy or end it.
To postpone that apocalypse Billy had taught himself to hoard the armor, to use it sparingly and only as often as his body demanded.
He resisted the urge, now, because he wanted to think. It occurred to him that there were lots of ways to handle this crisis. The obvious fact was that another time traveler had entered the city. But the time traveler might be anyone or anything; might have an interest in Billy or might not. Maybe no one really cared about him. .Maybe this intruder would leave him alone.
The other (and, Billy thought, more likely) possibility was that the time traveler knew all about Billy and the secrets he had prised from the woman with the wedge of glass in her head—that the time traveler wanted to punish or kill him. He had no evidence of this and some to the contrary; the intruder hadn’t tried to conceal his presence, and a good hunter would, wouldn’t he? Unless the hunter was so omnipotent he didn’t need to.
The idea frightened him.
Billy thought, I have two options.
Run or fight.
Running was problematic. Oh, he could get on a plane to Los Angeles or Miami or London; he knew how to do that. He could make a life for himself in some other place … at least as long as the armor continued to function.
But he couldn’t live with the knowledge that they might still find him—the time travelers, the tunnel builders, unknown others. Billy didn’t relish living the rest of his years as prey. That was why he had stayed in New York in the first place: to mind the tunnel, check the exits.
Therefore, he could fight.
True, he didn’t know who or what the intruder might be. But maybe that was only a temporary difficulty. Much of his armor’s forensics were still working; Billy guessed he could learn a great deal if he examined the tunnel for clues.
It all depended on the armor, didn’t it?
His lifeline. His life.
At last, he took it out of its hiding place.
He had traded its cardboard box for a wooden chest of approximately two cubic feet in volume—he’d found it in a Salvation Army thrift shop. The chest was closed with a padlock. Billy placed great faith in padlocks; they seemed so much more substantial than the electronic locks of his own era. He wore the key attached to a belt-loop of his pants. Billy lifted the chest from the back of his closet and used the key to open it.
The holes where the lancet and the stylet entered his body had almost healed—but it only hurt for a minute.
He wore loose, layered clothing over the armor to conceal it.
Billy knew how this made him look. He looked like an alcoholic, a bum. Seeing him, people would turn their faces away. But that wasn’t a bad thing.
Underneath, the armor regulated his skin temperature, kept him cool, kept him alert.
The armor was “turned off”—well below full combat capability. But its regulatory functions were automatic. The armor sampled his blood, his nervous impulses. A gland in one of the elytra synthesized new hormones and drip-released them into his body. He was alert, happy, confident.