“Then it gets complicated. Finding myself with plenty of money and too little time, I contact the dealer again, offering to sublet half my job. The next day a girl shows up who also has ‘Hailey Williams’ identification. I show her how to run the machine, and she takes over Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Half of my real salary is 2700K, so she gets half that, 1350K, and pays the dealer 135.”
She got a pad and a stylus and did some figuring. “So the real Hailey Williams gets 6000K weekly for doing nothing. I work three days a week for 4050K. My assistant works three days for 1115K. The dealer gets 100,000K in fees and 735K per week. Lopsided, isn’t it?”
“Hmm … I’ll say. Quite illegal, too, I suppose.”
“For the dealer. Everybody else might lose their job and have to start over, if the Employment Board finds out. But the dealer gets brainwiped.”
“Guess I better find a dealer, while I can still afford the fifty-grand bite.” Actually, I still had over three million, but planned to run through most of it in a short time. Hell, I’d earned it.
I was getting ready to go the next morning when Mother came in with a shoebox. Inside, there was a small pistol in a clip-on holster.
“This belonged to your father,” she explained. “Better wear it if you’re planning to go downtown without a bodyguard.”
It was a gunpowder pistol with ridiculously thin bullets. I hefted it in my hand. “Did Dad ever use it?”
“Several times … just to scare away riders and hitters, though. He never actually shot anybody.”
“You’re probably right that I need a gun,” I said, putting. it back. “But I’d have to have something with more heft to it. Can I buy one legally?”
“Sure, there’s a gun store down in the Mall. As long as you don’t have a police record, you can buy anything that suits you.” Good; I’d get a little pocket laser. I could hardly hit the wall with a gunpowder pistol.
“But … William, I’d feel a lot better if you’d hire a bodyguard, at least until you know your way around.” We’d gone all around that last night. Being an official Trained Killer, I thought I was tougher than any clown I might hire for the job.
“I’ll check into it, Mother. Don’t worry — I’m not even going downtown today, just into Hyattsville.”
“That’s just as bad.”
When the elevator came, it was already occupied. He looked at me blandly as I got in, a man a little older than me, clean-shaven and well dressed. He stepped back to let me at the row of buttons. I punched 47 and then, realizing his motive might not have been politeness, turned to see him struggling to get at a metal pipe stuck in his waistband. It had been hidden by his cape.
“Come on, fella,” I said, reaching for a nonexistent weapon. “You wanna get caulked?”
He had the pipe free but let it hang loosely at his side. “Caulked?”
“Killed. Army term.” I took one step toward him, trying to remember. Kick just under the knee, then either groin or kidney. I decided on the groin.
“No.” He put the pipe back in his waistband. “I don’t want to get ‘caulked.’ ” The door opened at 47 and I backed out.
The gun shop was all bright white plastic and gleamy black metal. A little bald man bobbed over to wait on me. He had a pistol in a shoulder rig.
“And a fine morning to you, sir,” he said and giggled. “What will it be today?”
“Lightweight pocket laser,” I said. “Carbon dioxide.”
He looked at me quizzically and then brightened. “Coming right up, sir.” Giggle. “Special today, I throw in a handful of tachyon grenades.”
“Fine.” They’d be handy.
He looked at me expectantly. “So? What’s the popper?”
“Huh?”
“The punch, man; you set me up, now knock me down. Laser.” He giggled.
I was beginning to understand. “You mean I can’t buy a laser.”
“Of course not, sweetie,” he said and sobered. “You didn’t know that?”
“I’ve been out of the country for a long time.”
“The world, you mean. You’ve been out of the world a long time.” He put his left hand on a chubby hip in a gesture that incidentally made his gun easier to get. He scratched the center of his chest.
I stood very still. “That’s right. I just got out of the Force.”
His jaw dropped. “Hey, no bully-bull? You been out shootin’ ’em up, out in space?”
“That’s right.”
“Hey, all that crap about you not gettin’ older, there’s nothin’ to that, is there?”
“Oh, it’s true. I was born in 1975.”
“Well, god … damn. You’re almost as old as I am.” He giggled. “I thought that was just something the government made up.”
“Anyhow … you say I can’t buy a laser—”
“Oh, no. No no no. I run a legal shop here.”
“What can I buy?”
“Oh, pistol, rifle, shotgun, knife, body armor … just no lasers or explosives or fully automatic weapons.”
“Let me see a pistol. The biggest you have.”
“Ah, I’ve got just the thing.” He motioned me over to a display case and opened the back, taking out a huge revolver.
“Four-ten-gauge six-shooter.” He cradled it in both hands. “Dinosaur-stopper. Authentic Old West styling. Slugs or flechettes.”
“Flechettes?”
“Sure — uh, they’re like a bunch of tiny darts. You shoot and they spread out in a Pattern. Hard to miss that way.”
Sounded like my speed. “Anyplace I can try it out?”
“ ’Course, of course, we have a range in back. Let me get my assistant.” He rang a bell and a boy came out to watch the store while we went in back. He picked up a red-and-green box of shotgun shells on the way.
The range was in two sections, a little anteroom with a plastic transparent door and a long corridor on the other side of the door with a table at one end and targets at the other. Behind the targets was a sheet of metal that evidently deflected the bullets down into a pool of water.
He loaded the pistol and set it on the table. “Please don’t pick it up until the door’s closed.” He went into the anteroom, closed the door, and picked up a microphone. “Okay. First time, you better hold on to it with both hands.” I did so, raising it up in line with the center target, a square of paper looking about the size of your thumbnail at arm’s length. Doubted I’d even come near it. I pulled the trigger and it went back easily enough, but nothing happened.
“No, no,” he said over, the microphone with a tinny giggle. “Authentic Old West styling. You’ve got to pull the hammer back.”
Sure, just like in the flicks. I hauled the hammer back, lined it up again, and squeezed the trigger.
The noise was so loud it made my face sting. The gun bucked up and almost hit me on the forehead. But the three center targets were gone: just tiny tatters of paper drifting in the air.
“I’ll take it.”
He sold me a hip holster, twenty shells, a chest-and-back shield, and a dagger in a boot sheath. I felt more heavily armed than I had in a fighting suit. But no waldos to help me cart it around.
The monorail had two guards for each car. I was beginning to feel that all my heavy artillery was superfluous, until I got off at the Hyattsville station.
Everyone who got off at Hyattsville was either heavily armed or had a bodyguard. The people loitering around the station were all armed. The police carried lasers.
I pushed a “cab call” button, and the readout told me mine would be No. 3856. I asked a policeman and he told me to wait for it down on the street; it would cruise around the block twice.
During the five minutes I waited, I twice heard staccato arguments of gunfire, both of them rather far away. I was glad I’d bought the shield.