A Bridge of Years (41 page)

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 tunnel was
intact when I moved into the house on the Post Road. He could have
walked in and killed me in my sleep, if he exists ...
if
he's still alive. I was in danger then, I'm in danger now—what's
the difference? As long as he can't find me—

"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." "Tom, I
don't know if that's a real good idea." He opened the door. "I
don't have a better one."

He
rang the buzzer.

Nobody
answered. Then he climbed the stairs—these old, dirty boards
complaining under his feet. It must be four
a.m.,
Tom
calculated. The light from the incandescent bulb over the landing was
stale and fierce.

He
opened the door and knew at once the apartment was empty.

He
switched on the lights. Joyce wasn't home and he guessed—prayed—she
hadn't been. Nothing had been disturbed since this morning. Two
coffee cups stood on the kitchen table, brown puddles inside. He
walked into the bedroom. The bed was unmade. The rain beat
against the window, a lonesome sound.

Yesterday's
paper lay open on the arm of the sofa, and Tom regarded it with a
stab of longing: if he could step back even a day he could turn this
around, keep Joyce safe, maybe even keep Lawrence Millstein alive—he
would have a handle on what was happening.

But
the thought was ludicrous. Hadn't he proved that already? My
God, here he was armed with nearly thirty years of foresight and he
couldn't even help
himself.
It
had all been a dream. A dream about something called "the past,"
a fiction; it didn't exist. Nothing was predictable, nothing
played the same way twice, every certainty dissolved at the touch.

History
was a place where dramas were played out on a ghost stage, the way
Joyce's old boyfriend had imagined D-day. But that's not true, Tom
thought. This was history: an address, a locality, a place where
people lived. History was this room. Not emblematic, merely specific;
merely this vacant space, which he had come to love.

He
thought about Barbara, who had never much cared about the past but
had longed for the future ...
the
uncreated future in which there were no certainties, only
possibilities.

Everywhere
the same, Tom thought. 1962 or 1862 or 2062. Every acre of the world
littered with bones and hope. He was indescribably tired.

He
stepped into the hallway and sealed the apartment, which had
contained a fair portion of his happiness, but which was empty now.
He would be better off waiting with Doug in the car.

He
was leaving the building when a taxi pulled up at the curb.

He
watched Joyce pay the driver and step out into the rain.

Her
clothes were instantly wet and her hair matted against her forehead.
Her eyes were obscure behind rain-fogged lenses.

It
was raining when they met, Tom recalled, a couple of months ago in
the park. She had looked different then. Less tired. Less frightened.

She
regarded him warily, then crossed the pavement.

He
touched her wet shoulders.

She
hesitated, then came into his arms.

"He
was dead, Tom," she said. "He was just lying there dead."

"I
know."

"Oh,
God. I need to sleep. I need to sleep a long, long time."

She
moved toward the lobby; he restrained her with his hands. "Joyce,
you can't. It's not safe in there."

She
pulled away. He felt a sudden tension in her body, as if she were
bracing herself for some new horror. "What are you talking
about?"

"The
thing—the man who killed Lawrence—I believe he meant to kill me.
He must know about this place by now."

"I
don't
understand
this."
She balled her fists. "What are you saying, that you know who
killed Lawrence?"

"Joyce,
it's too much to explain."

"He
wasn't stabbed, Tom. He wasn't shot. He was burned open. It's
indescribable. There was a big hole burned into him. Do you know
about that?"

"We
can talk when we've found a safe place."

"There's
no end to this, is there? Oh, shit, Tom. I've seen
way
too
much ugliness tonight. Don't tell me this shit. You don't have to go
inside if you don't want to. But I need to sleep."

"Listen,
listen to me. If you spend the night in that apartment you could
come out like Lawrence. I don't want it to be that way but that's the
way it is."

She
looked at him fiercely . . . then her anger seemed to subside,
swallowed up in an immense exhaustion. She might have been crying.
Tom couldn't tell, with the rain and all.

She
said, "I thought I loved you! I don't even know what you
are!"

"Let
me take you somewhere."

"What
do you mean, somewhere?"

"A
long way from here. I've got a car waiting and I've got a friend
inside. Please, Joyce."

Archer
put his head out the window of the Ford, shouting against the hiss of
the rain—the words were unintelligible— then ducked back inside
and revved the engine.

Tom
felt his heart bump in his chest. He pulled Joyce toward the car.

She
resisted and would have turned back, but a smoking gash opened in the
concrete stoop a few inches from her hand. Tom looked at the
blackened stone for a few dumb seconds before its significance
registered. Some kind of weapon had done this: some kind of
ray
gun.
This
was ludicrous but quite terrifying. Archer leaned over the seat
and jacked open the rear door of the car; Tom pushed Joyce toward it.
She didn't push back this time but was too shocked to coordinate her
legs. She tumbled inside with Tom behind her, a motion that seemed
endless, and the rain came down on the metal roof with a sound like
gunfire.

Archer
lunged his rental Ford into the street before Tom could close the
door. He committed a 180-degree turn that left V-shaped skids on the
wet asphalt, tires shrieking.

As
the car rotated Tom caught a glimpse of the man who had tried to kill
him.