hadn’t any prescription laws. Ed’s medicine cabinets contained everything from aspirin to morphine. Ironically, the dozen plastic bottles Clarissa had left contained mostly vitamin E, bone meal, and ascorbic acid tabs the size of my badge. For inducing sleep, she preferred using a cross between voodoo and electronics she called electronarcosis. But it wasn’t working very well for me.
Lying restlessly in the dark, I tried arguing Ed’s terminal out of something to read. Then I heard it: a humming, soft but unmistakable. I might have slept through it. I turned. In the dim backlight of distant street lamps, I could make out a shadow against the windowpane.
My Smith & Wesson lay on the bureau, but I’d insisted on keeping the derringer under my pillow, and that made me mad. It was likely to ruin my hand, and all I needed now was another set of Basset coils. Nevertheless, I reached slowly behind my head, found the tiny, inadequate handle, and cocked the contraption under the pillow. One shot. I’d better make it a good close one.
The window, hinged at the top, opened outward. A shadow silently threw its leg over the sill. One step across the floor, two, three. Starlight glinted on naked steel.
He was on me! A huge knife swung in a glittering arc and I twisted the gun to bear as his blade tangled in the wiring around me, skittered along the cast on my arm, and was deflected. The derringer went off in a blinding explosion, missing his face by a handspan. I dropped the gun from stinging fingers, grabbing at his wrist. He jerked it back—I let him, pushing the razor-sharp edge toward his face. It caught under his jaw, pivoting where it bit, slicing flesh and corded muscle, spraying us both with blood. He fought the blade as it trembled a quarter-inch from his carotid, both of us weakening fast in the deadlock. I heard bones breaking in his wrist.
Suddenly he let go, ripped himself from my failing grasp, and dived head-first out the window as— Slap! Slap! The glazing dissolved in a million crystalline shards.
The lights came on. Ed slumped against the door frame, a spidery wisp of smoke drifting from the muzzle of his .375. I sagged back into the sweat-soaked bed; Clarissa’s careful circuitry a dangling ruin. The bloody knife lay on the blanket, millimeters from my shaking, gun-bruised hand. Ed’s glance traveled from my blood-streaked face to the foot-long blade. “Don’t you know better than to try shaving in the dark?”
“The gore belongs to the other guy.” I mopped my face with the sheet. There was dampness lower down, too—trust my bladder in a crisis. “Think you hit him?”
“I doubt it.” He examined the empty window frame, leaning outward for a moment. “He left his ladder behind. Wait a minute … something here just below the sill.” He held up a plastic box the size of a cigarette pack, hanging from a skein of wires. “A defeater. Damps the vibrations caused by forced entry. Complicated, and very expensive. Only the second one I’ve seen since—”
“If that thing makes a humming sound, he should demand his money back. That’s what gave him away.”
“Excess energy has to be given off somewhere—heat or sonics. Maybe it just wasn’t his day.”
I snorted, surveying the shambles. “You didn’t see him lying on the ground out there?”
“No. Missed him by a mile. He probably picked up a fanny full of splinters, though.” He nodded toward the shattered window.
I grinned. There was an odd, oily gleam around the edges of the frame. Maybe just an odd effect of the light. “How’d he survive the fall?” I looked again. The amoeboid glistening was still there.
“Simple, with ten-foot juniper bushes packed around the base of the house. Think you’ll be all right if I look around a bit?”
I hesitated. “Before you go out … it’s the sheets—I’ve kind of embarrassed myself, it seems.”
He didn’t laugh. “My fault, really. I considered putting on extra security, but
Lying restlessly in the dark, I tried arguing Ed’s terminal out of something to read. Then I heard it: a humming, soft but unmistakable. I might have slept through it. I turned. In the dim backlight of distant street lamps, I could make out a shadow against the windowpane.
My Smith & Wesson lay on the bureau, but I’d insisted on keeping the derringer under my pillow, and that made me mad. It was likely to ruin my hand, and all I needed now was another set of Basset coils. Nevertheless, I reached slowly behind my head, found the tiny, inadequate handle, and cocked the contraption under the pillow. One shot. I’d better make it a good close one.
The window, hinged at the top, opened outward. A shadow silently threw its leg over the sill. One step across the floor, two, three. Starlight glinted on naked steel.
He was on me! A huge knife swung in a glittering arc and I twisted the gun to bear as his blade tangled in the wiring around me, skittered along the cast on my arm, and was deflected. The derringer went off in a blinding explosion, missing his face by a handspan. I dropped the gun from stinging fingers, grabbing at his wrist. He jerked it back—I let him, pushing the razor-sharp edge toward his face. It caught under his jaw, pivoting where it bit, slicing flesh and corded muscle, spraying us both with blood. He fought the blade as it trembled a quarter-inch from his carotid, both of us weakening fast in the deadlock. I heard bones breaking in his wrist.
Suddenly he let go, ripped himself from my failing grasp, and dived head-first out the window as— Slap! Slap! The glazing dissolved in a million crystalline shards.
The lights came on. Ed slumped against the door frame, a spidery wisp of smoke drifting from the muzzle of his .375. I sagged back into the sweat-soaked bed; Clarissa’s careful circuitry a dangling ruin. The bloody knife lay on the blanket, millimeters from my shaking, gun-bruised hand. Ed’s glance traveled from my blood-streaked face to the foot-long blade. “Don’t you know better than to try shaving in the dark?”
“The gore belongs to the other guy.” I mopped my face with the sheet. There was dampness lower down, too—trust my bladder in a crisis. “Think you hit him?”
“I doubt it.” He examined the empty window frame, leaning outward for a moment. “He left his ladder behind. Wait a minute … something here just below the sill.” He held up a plastic box the size of a cigarette pack, hanging from a skein of wires. “A defeater. Damps the vibrations caused by forced entry. Complicated, and very expensive. Only the second one I’ve seen since—”
“If that thing makes a humming sound, he should demand his money back. That’s what gave him away.”
“Excess energy has to be given off somewhere—heat or sonics. Maybe it just wasn’t his day.”
I snorted, surveying the shambles. “You didn’t see him lying on the ground out there?”
“No. Missed him by a mile. He probably picked up a fanny full of splinters, though.” He nodded toward the shattered window.
I grinned. There was an odd, oily gleam around the edges of the frame. Maybe just an odd effect of the light. “How’d he survive the fall?” I looked again. The amoeboid glistening was still there.
“Simple, with ten-foot juniper bushes packed around the base of the house. Think you’ll be all right if I look around a bit?”
I hesitated. “Before you go out … it’s the sheets—I’ve kind of embarrassed myself, it seems.”
He didn’t laugh. “My fault, really. I considered putting on extra security, but
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