"Not yet. But this thing wasn't in the water more than a day or two. So we're looking."

"Buena suerte."

"Yeah. Meanwhile, I get to take this around to the local dealers and p.a.w.nshops, see if anyone says, "Oh, sure, I sold that to John Smith last week.' "

"Sounds like a fun job."

"I think 's.h.i.t job' is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the p.a.w.nshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols."

"Start 'em out right." Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved good-bye.

There were two p.a.w.nshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.

It wasn't the best part of town, but they didn't put p.a.w.nshops in the high-rent district. Or police stations. It amused him to walk along in uniform and watch people's expressions. Trying to look innocent was a real strain on some of them.

There were two large shops next door to one another. He went to the farther one first; the owner was a likable enough guy.

He stepped into the cold air. They probably kept the airco cranked up to minimize the attic smell, mildew and dust. Gun oil and furniture polish. Rabin was fascinated by the places, but not the weapons counter. All the biographies scattered around. Life stories, death stories. Complete tool sets, well-used musical instruments, fancy camera and cube sets. You got so little on the dollar for them, their owners had to be dead or desperate. Or thieves.

The bell when the door closed brought the owner out of a back room. "Qabil. What can I sell you?

Can I buy your gun?"

"Yeah, and my thumb, too." His weapon was keyed to his thumb-print. "Check this out?" He put the box on the gla.s.s case full of handguns.

"Evidence, eh? What happened?"

"Some guy's going around killing p.a.w.nshop owners. What you think?"

He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the b.u.t.t, where the serial number had been ground off. "Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon."

He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. "Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see 'em now and then."

"Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs."

"Tell me about it. I don't think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don't see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber."

"You think the chrome plating was factory?"

He took out a pair of magnifying gla.s.ses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon's edgesand surfaces. "Yeah. Guarantee it." He took off the gla.s.ses and set the gun back in the box.

"What else?"

"You fished it out of the water, but it hadn't been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun's practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That's where I'd start."

"What's it worth?"

"Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn't touch it. Obvious. .h.i.t weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath."

"On the street?"

"Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that."

"Think I will." Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. "Thanks, Oz. You've been a help."

"Sorry I couldn't ID it. Buena suerte."

"Buenas." When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.

The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!

Norman His heart stopped and restarted. "Qabil. I ... I don't know what to ... buenos dias."

"Uh ... buenos. How've you been?"

"Fine ... just fine." Could he be in on it? No, he'd never. "I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago.

They're growing fast."

"They do that." There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. "Got to see a man about a gun."

"Oh. Sure." He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.

"What are you doing here? Slumming?"

"I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today."

He nodded. "I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good."

"Oh yeah. She's fine." The one time they'd met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.

"Take care," he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.

Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.

The p.a.w.nbroker wouldn't say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.

It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn't be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.

Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn't do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.

Maybe later. First he'd talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they'd have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.

He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.

He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he'd never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He undipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent ofmarijuana and spilled beer.

There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.

There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, gla.s.s cracked. A sign on the wall said no f.u.c.king profanity/no use palabras VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.

The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out "Moment.i.to!"

and it actually was just a moment.

He was a big black man with startling blue eyes, obviously Cuban. Bright metal teeth. "What'll you have?"

"Draft Molly. Use your bathroom?"

"Sure. Ain't cleaned it yet."

Norman was prepared for an odoriferous h.e.l.l, but it wasn't bad in that respect. The urinal was a metal trough that evidently dispensed a powerful antiseptic. There was blood on the floor, though, and a smeared handprint of dried blood on the stall door.

He opened the door and didn't find a body, so the previous night's activity had probably been conflict resolution rather than murder. He locked the stall and sat down and opened the bag.

He'd bought an old-fashioned revolver for reliability. It had been so long since he'd fired a gun; more than thirty years. In 2020 he'd killed a couple of dozen men for the crime, he always said, of wearing the other side's uniform. Something he'd had in common with Qabil, though their wars were a generation apart, and he was technically the enemy.

In Norman's mind, there were no enemies in war. Just victims. Victims of historical process.

Heavy blued steel. He riddled with a mechanism on the side and the cylinder swung away. He slid six fat cartridges into their homes and snapped it shut.

He could just put the muzzle in his mouth and, again, simplify everything. Sure. Then Rory would have to identify the rest of his body, and w.i.l.l.y Joe and his pals would just shift their focus to her.

Besides, simplifying was against his nature. He resealed the cartridge box and considered what to do with the nineteen remaining rounds. If it were combat, you'd want them as handy as possible. But he couldn't imagine a situation where he'd have the opportunity, or necessity, to reload. He knew that w.i.l.l.y Joe carried a weapon; that was part of his swagger. Maybe his lawyer was armed, too, or there would be bodyguards.

He'd survived two bullet wounds, lung and leg, in the war. He might survive another. But the real lesson from the experience was to aim for the head.

They were experimenting with brain transplants. In w.i.l.l.y Joe's case, anything would be an improvement.

He considered throwing away the nineteen cartridges here, where another patron could make use of them. But with his luck the police would find them instead, and they'd trace them back to him. a.s.suming he survived lunch.

The rational part of him knew there was little danger; he was useless to them dead. But part of him would always be in the desert, fighting men with guns, and he wasn't going to face one unarmed.

Besides, w.i.l.l.y Joe didn't strike him as particularly rational. He put the bullets back in the bag and took out the light plastic holster. He set the revolver on a shelf and read the instructions, then opened his shirt and twisted the holster back and forth rapidly. It warmed in his hands. He carefully positioned it under his left arm and pressed it into place. It stuck like glue, but would supposedly peel away painlessly.

He slipped the gun into it, the weight strange but rea.s.suring, then flushed the toilet (a flagrant violation of the law) and returned to the bar.The bartender had waited for him to come out. He cracked the tap slowly and filled a frosted mug.

"Y'know, I got a memory for faces. You ain't been in here before, but I seen you someplace."

"That's not surprising. I've lived around Gainesville for forty years." The beer was a new kind, bland but with a little catnip bite. Ice-cold, though, and welcome. "Good. Norman Bell. I'm a music teacher and musician."

"Si, si. I've seen you on the cube with your wife, Professor Bell. What you make of all this stuff?"

"Well, I sort of have to go along with the wife. Preserve domestic tranquillity."

He laughed. "I hear ya."

"She makes a good case, though. New Year's Day is going to be interesting."

"Little green men on the White House lawn?"

"Probably something even weirder than that. Something we can't even imagine."

The bartender poured himself a small gla.s.s of beer. "Yeah, I was reading ... like why don't they send a picture? They afraid of what we'd do?"

"What my wife says, they have no reason to be afraid of us for anything. They could fry the planet if we made a threatening move."

"Jesus."

"But there are any number of innocent explanations. Maybe they don't send pictures because there's n.o.body aboard; it's just a robot that's programmed to wander around, listening for radio waves. That's what Rory thinks. My wife."

"That was in the article. Also maybe they're like invisible. Made of energy."

I've had students like that, Norman thought. "I don't think there's anything mysterious about it.

They know a lot about us, evidently, and don't want us to know too much about them. That's what a military operation would do."

"So we can kiss our a.s.s adios."

"Not necessarily. We don't know anything about their psychology. They might be following some kind of a ritual. Or keeping us in suspense as a kind of joke. Who knows?"

"Yeah, I guess." He wiped the bar slowly. "You do any gettin' ready for it?"

"You mean emergency preparations?" He shrugged. "Just what we have on hand for hurricanes.

Plenty of water and food. I'm more worried about people panicking than aliens."

"Me, too. You ought to go down to the p.a.w.nshop and get a gun."

Norman jumped. "Como?"

"What I did. Somethin' a guy at the bar said. "Ammunition will get you through times of no food, but food won't get you through times of no ammo.' The guys with him thought that was muy chistoso. Then one of them whispered something and they looked at me and laughed again. Them's the kind I went out and got the gun for."

"Claro. You must have some rough customers here." Norman nodded toward the bathroom.

"Looks like you had a big fight back there last night."

"Oh, mierda. They bust it up?"

"No, just blood."

He nodded philosophically and picked up a bucket. " 'Scuse me."

Norman finished his beer and pondered leaving a tip. No; the guy didn't need any more surprises this morning.

Back in the sunlight, he clipped his bag to the handlebars and looked down, out of the glare: a storm drain. There was n.o.body in sight, so in a quick motion he pulled out the box of ammo and tossed it into the drain.It was as if a weight had been lifted from him. Odd. He supposed the act confirmed that the gun's function was purely defensive.

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes, and the restaurant was ten minutes away at a slow pace.