He paused a moment, adjusted his opticals and gazed up at the sky.
Ordinarily the city sky was featureless, but Billy’s opticals showed him too many stars to count. It was like an Ohio sky, Billy thought.
He felt a sudden pang of longing, so intense it worried him. The armor was pumping out complex neurochemicals to make him alert, to help him hunt—to keep him alive. There shouldn’t have been room for nostalgia. Unless the elytra or the lancet or the strange, false gland in the armor had begun to fail.
But they hadn’t, really; or if they had, the effect was purely transient. Billy sat on a park bench until the pang of homesickness faded. Then the sky was only the sky, clean and blank of meaning. He retuned his opticals and crossed the empty space of Washington Square South at Sullivan, hunting.
And came up empty. And sweated through another day.
In the early evening he went out without his armor to wander the busy streets of the Village. He sat for a time on the terrace at the Cafe Figaro, mistaken by its regulars for one more middle-aged tourist, wondering whether the intruder had strolled past him in the crowd or might even be sitting at the next table, smug with thirty years’ worth of cheap prescience. Or might after all have left the city: that was still a real possibility. In which case Billy’s prey would be hopelessly beyond reach, no trace of him but a residue of fading phosphorescence.
But Billy hadn’t given up yet.
He went home, donned the armor, wandered toward mid-town in a ragged pattern for three hours without result.
He finished the night without killing anything—a profound disappointment.
And dreamed of blue light.
Three nights later, ranging west along Eighth Street, he discovered a smoky luminescence around the doorway and interior of a tiny retail shop called Lindner’s Radio Supply. Billy smiled to himself, and went home, and slept.
He woke in the heat of the afternoon.
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 announcing the word STEREOPHONIC! Beyond that, in the dimness, an old man stood patiently behind a wooden counter. Billy felt a tinge of disappointment: was this feeble thing his prey?
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, sunny afternoon. He shielded his eyes.
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 sunny afternoon. Billy crossed at the corner and examined his own reflection in a window. Here was a gray-haired man in a dirty gray overcoat carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag. Ugly but hardly conspicuous. He smiled a little.
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.