The Puppet corrected his aim, swung his stiffened hand, felt the blow connect solidly with the stranger's neck. The man grunted, crashed into the headboard he had been trying to reach, bounced back onto the mattress and was still.
Without wasting any time in self-congratulations, the Puppet found the switch on the reading lamp built into the back of the bed. The fixture dropped a puddle of light onto the center of the rumpled bedclothes. He hefted the unconscious man around until his face was in the middle of the puddle. A broad forehead framed with sparse, black hair. Eyes set deep and close together. A heavy, broken nose, broken more than once; thick lips, a brutish chin, a scar along the left jawline. It was the right man, though the Puppet did not even know his name.
Turning from the unconscious stranger, he slipped the pack off his back and set it down on an easy chair on the other side of the room. His fingers moved nimbly as he unstrapped its flap and peered inside, removed a pistol and a clip of ammunition. He took out a pair of gray gloves, slipped them on, then loaded the weapon. It was a very authentic weapon, one that fitted the decade of the 1970's; one that could even be traced to its original place of purchase, though the records of its owner were lost. When he was done, he would wipe all surfaces clean of prints, even though his own prints were not on file anywhere in the world and never would be. If the surfaces were smeared, the police would assume a known criminal had been responsible, a man hiding his traces carefully. Another false trail, of course, just like the gun. He flicked off the safety and turned. He was only halfway around when the slam of the other man's pistol boomed through the room and the hot sting of the bullet bit into his thigh.
The slug did not hit bone, though it tore a chunk of flesh out of his leg big enough to fill the palm of his hand. He was spun back against the easy chair, fell over the arm and struck the floor hard with the side of his head. He felt the pain of the wound pounding up through his entire body. It shook his frame as if he had been grasped in two gigantic hands which were intent upon rending him into little bits and pieces. With one hand, he reached down and felt the wound. His hand came away slick with heavy, rich blood. For a moment, he felt as if he would pass out. There were dancing, whirling lights in his head. As each one burst, a pitch spot replaced it. In a moment, there would be total darkness-and then, surely, death.
He heard feet on the floor, moving quickly toward the chair. He already had the picture. At the moment, the chair hid him from the stranger, but it would be a useless barrier in seconds. The man would come around it, level his gun at the Puppet's head, and calmly fill his skull with lead. That might actually be nice, part of the Puppet's mind decided. Nice sharp bullets in the brain would snuff out all the agony of the leg wound. Two slugs lodged in the frontal lobe, fragments radiating in all directions, would put an end to the pounding ache, bring him soft relaxing darkness.
With an effort, he roused himself, expelled the longing for rest. He had not been sent here to fail. Too much depended upon his fulfilling the obligations set upon him. He was lying flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, a fist-sized chunk torn from his leg. His situation was not pretty. The only thing he had going for him was his gloved right hand which still clutched the loaded pistol. He tried bringing it around, realizing for the first time how heavy it was. Perhaps, with a heavy-duty winch, he could lift it. Or if he had seven or eight strong arms to lend a hand. But he only had two hands, his own. He brought his left hand over, clamped the pistol in both palms. Yes, that made it easier. Now it was only about as bad as ripping an oak tree loose of its root system and turning it around for replanting.
He had the gun almost in position when the stranger appeared over the arm of the chair. It wasn't exactly where he wanted it, but he pulled the trigger anyway. It took a little over two thousand years to accomplish that, and he watched the stars dying inside his head while he waited. Then there was a flash of light, a booming, and a long scream that ended in a gurgle.
Abruptly, the gun's weight doubled, tripled, and he could no longer hold it. It fell out of his hands and landed on the carpet next to his head. He gritted his teeth and waited for the stranger to take his turn in the shooting match. While he was waiting, he passed out.
He was in a dark forest, running toward a patch of gray light. Behind, a pack of wild dogs, slavering and keening, were gaining on him. One of the dogs had already attached itself to his leg and was slowly devouring him. Then, a dozen yards from the gray light, he tripped and fell. The moaning pack drew closer, howling with sudden excitement.
The Puppet woke and batted at the dog, but only slapped his hand on a bloody, pulsing wound in his own leg. For a time, he could not think where he was. Then the programming took over, and he did not even care where he was, did not care about anything but the next step of the plan. He had not been killed. The room was quiet He could remember an ugly scream just as he passed out, one which was not his own. He did not scream. Was the stranger dead, as intended?
The thing to do was get up and find out. The only trouble was that his left leg had grown roots into the floorboards. He grabbed an arm of the easy chair, braced his other hand on the floor, simultaneously pulled and pushed himself toward a standing position. But the leg held tight to the carpet. For a brief instant, he considered the expediency of taking the disintegrator coin out of his pock and slicing the limb off. It would save a lot of trouble. As if in response, the leg gave a little and started to rise. He got his good foot under himself and, shakily, pushed erect, holding onto the chair until the knuckles of that hand were a bloodless white.
It took only a moment to discover he had completed the next stage of the plan, perhaps a bit more messily than anticipated. The stranger lay in the center of the floor, one half of his face set at all the wrong angles from the other half. There was a bullet hole under his jaw.
The Puppet let go of the chair. The room tilted, threatened to turn upside-down. He got hold of it and throttled it into passivity, then staggered to the corpse. It was surely a corpse, considering the wound, but he had to make certain. He placed a hand against its chest, could feel no heartbeat. The back of his hands against the nostrils could not detect even the slightest trace of respiration. He turned away and wobbled back to the easy chair, laid the pistol half under it, where it could easily be seen, closed the rucksack and strapped that on his back. Haltingly, he wiped all the shiny surfaces in that half of the room, setting the false trail. Then, hands still gloved, he closed the door to the bedroom and tottered down the hall to the steps. He sat down heavily on the first riser and looked at his leg wound.
The sight of it did nothing for his confidence. The hole was dark with clotted blood. The ragged flesh around the edges had a curled and blackened look that made him think of charred paper. He probed the hole with his fingers, found the blunt end of the bullet. When he touched it, pain shot up his leg, making him double over and bite his lips. He let go of the wound, took a medkit out of his rucksack, laid that out on the steps. He opened it, withdrew the small mechanical surgeon-hound, pressed the sucking mouth of it against the wound, and activated it.
The tiny robot whirred, launched forward into the bloody flesh, found the bullet, began working at it with microminiature blades, then sucked on it, grasped it, and slid backwards out of the wound, the job finished.
There was a rush of blood.