Planetary Agent X

by Mack Reynolds

Billy Antrim was in Norfolk, all right, but in one other respect he was one ahead of his unknown pursuer. He wasn’t foolish enough to spend his time in museums, zoos, or even parks. His intuition as a killer animal on the run told him that such institutions would be on the watch.

  Instead, he made his way to the nearest secondary school, slouched his way in in his now practiced imitation of the teenager of all centuries, joining the crowd. At the first opportunity, he took up a pile of books which some negligent student had left unsupervised for the moment, and carried them along under his arm in like fashion to his neighbors.

  He located the school library and stayed there as long as he thought practical, and then managed to find the students’ projection rooms, where he spent the rest of the morning watching educational Tri-D tapes. It didn’t take him long to locate those pertaining to historical matters involving wars of the past and such items of violence.

  He discovered by chance that noon-time meals in the school’s cafeteria were free and saved his paper wrapped reserves from the restro-cafeteria of that early morning.

  But sleep was now becoming the ultimate necessity. He hadn’t truly slept for three days and even youth has its limits, especially when under the stress being carried by Billy Antrim.

  However, he couldn’t discover a hiding place in the school buildings where he could trust himself for even an hour, and he knew that if he took the chance, an hour would never do. Once down, he was going to be a log for at least eight hours, possibly more. He couldn’t afford to let down his defenses for that length of time, even if he had found a hole in which to hibernate.

  The Antrim luck continued to hold when school let out. He took up his books and drifted along with the current of students, those who were pedestrian. He hated to be out in the light of day at all but at least he had protective coloring for a time. He had no idea of how good a description Earth authorities had of him. For all he knew, Luigi Agrigento might have even leaked them a photograph, his fingerprints and whatever else they might have wanted the better to hunt down Billy Antrim. His lips pulled further back in a wolf-like, humorless grin; Big Luigi wasn’t going to be entirely happy until he got word that his former protégé was no more. There was a lot Billy knew about the workings of the Maffeo.

  As his fellow students dropped off to the left and right, Billy Antrim was faced with the problem of new camouflage. He wasn’t going to be able to walk the streets, certainly not after nightfall, with his armload of books and remain inconspicuous. He had to find shelter, and, above all, he had to find sleep.

  He pulled up short before a Sauna-Turkish Bath.

  If it was anything like the Moorish type bath which had come down in Sicily from the days when the Saracens had occupied that island, and later went on the planet Palermo…

  He’d take the chance. He entered.

  The place was, of course, highly automated. There was but one attendant and he, bored, was scanning a portable Tri-D set. He hardly looked up. “In there,” he said.

  The dressing room had individual lockers, of course. Right now, he was the only customer. Billy Antrim hesitated only momentarily before parting with his clothes, his food supply and, above all, his knife and gun. But there was nothing for it. He locked them up and slid the elastic which bore the key about his wrist.

  There were lettered instructions about the room. He followed directions, spent a minimum time in the steam room, took one quick plunge in the pool, then sought out the massage rooms. They were separate cubicles. He entered one. There was no key, but the door evidently registered OCCUPIED when someone was inside.

  He sneered at the instructions for making operative the electrical masseur and flung himself down on the massage table, asleep before his body had completely relaxed on the hard surface.

  A voice said, “Hey, chum, you fell asleep. You figuring on stayin’ all night?” There was a laugh, as though something hugely amusing had been said.

  Ordinarily, Billy Antrim’s awakening was instantaneous, as a professional killer’s should be. But now his exhausted body resisted awakening. He muttered something, fretfully.

  “Come on, come on, boy. I’m closing up.”

  Billy Antrim felt a less than gentle hand shaking him. He came instantly alert, staring at the other, his blue eyes ice.

  The attendant he had seen earlier in the other office pulled back his hand quickly. He said, stubbornly, “It’s closing.”

  Billy swung his legs around and to the floor.

  “Awright,” he muttered. “Gosh, I musta fell asleep.”

  The attendant left and Billy made his way back to the dressing rooms and reacquired his belongings. Nothing had been touched.

  This was the crucial point, now. Before returning to the entry office, he loosened the gun beneath his jacket, but then assumed a puzzled and repentant expression.

  He approached the desk with its payment screen against which to press a credit card.

  “Ay, Mac,” he said sorrowfully. “Guess what? I’m sorry, but it looks like I forgot my credit card.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The attendant looked at him truculently. “I shoulda noticed. Why, you probably ain’t even got a adult card. Come on, boy. Get that junior I.D. out. You’re not talking yourself out of paying up. I seen dead beats before.”

  Billy said doggedly, “I’m sorry, Mac, but like I told you. I musta left it home. I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

  “I never even seen you before. I’m calling the police, sonny. Nobody’s walking out on this business.” He reached for a switch.

  Billy Antrim had two alternatives. The butt of the gun was within inches of his right hand. But a new killing would bring down the fuzz-yokes, and they were already too close behind for comfort.

  He said hurriedly, “Look. This here ring. It’s a star sapphire. I’ll let you keep it, until tomorrow. Then I’ll come back and pay off.”

  The other’s eyes narrowed in greed. “Okay, boy. I trust you. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Billy said bitterly. “I know how it is.” He turned and left.

  His mother had given him the ring. Back when they had been flush once. He suspected it had been given to her by a male admirer, most likely a lover, but it was the only thing he still possessed to keep alive the memory of Ruth Antrim, the one person he had ever loved. Now it was gone.

  What had happened to Ruth Antrim? After Big Luigi had shipped her off, Billy had never heard. She had probably written him, she would have written, but he suspected Luigi Agrigento had confiscated any such mail. Luigi at the time was amusing himself by educating the boy in the traditions of the Maffeo, and in the use of the gun, the knife, the sap.

  It was dark on the street. Warily, Billy Antrim trudged along, portraying the schoolboy who had dropped off at a theater and was now making his way on home.

  He had no time to be thinking of Ruth Antrim and Luigi Agrigento, but for the moment he couldn’t keep them from his mind. For the past three days fingers of doubt had been touching sensitive spots in his mind. While still a member of the Maffeo machine of Palermo, it had been easy enough to rationalize his way of life. The things he did were by order of Big Luigi himself, weren’t they? And Luigi Agrigento was the most important man on Palermo. It was as simple as that. What Big Luigi said was law.

  But now, as a victim of the machine, rather than a cog in it, the injustice of the Maffeo way was more evident.

  Billy Antrim sneered at himself, in sour self-deprecation. He was a rat on the run. Why not face reality? He was scum that the decent members of the race had to mop up. And then, contradictorily, he told himself in braggadocio that they’d have their work cut out in the mopping.

  “One chance in a million,” he muttered.

  It was getting too late for a schoolboy to be out. He’d be the more conspicuous by hanging onto the guise. He dropped the books into a waste disposal chute, straightened up and walked with a swagger, and as though he had already had two or three drinks before going out on the town seriou
sly.

  With luck, he decided, he might be able to crash a party. A party that would provide food and drink, though drink he could do without. Even at the most secure of times, a little alcohol went far with Billy Antrim. He could afford no blurred edges now.

  He didn’t find the party, but he did as well.

  A middle-aged, slightly overweight, overly-blonde, overly-dressed madonna of the cocktail lounges allowed him to pick her up. In fact, she couldn’t have been more obviously approachable had she dropped her handkerchief. She reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t finger the resemblance.

  In their early preliminaries, she giggled archly and said, “I must be robbing the cradle. Why, you can’t…”

  Billy was looking his most adult. “I know I look young. Always have. I guess when I get up into my fifties, I’ll be glad. Now it’s a pain in the neck. Anyhow, I’m twenty-five. And I’ll bet you’re not any older.”

  She giggled again. “Well, to tell you the truth…”

  “Call me Jimmy,” he said.

  “All right. I’m Betty Ann. To tell you the truth, Jimmy, I’m twenty-five too.”

  She was a good twenty years senior to that, Billy decided cynically.

  “How about a drink?”

  “We don’t have to go any further than in there, Jimmy,” she laughed, indicating the nearest auto-bar. “You know, I’m glad we met. I think we’re going to have fun. Wasn’t it a coincidence?”

  It turned out that he had left his, credit card at home.

  She laughed at that, too. At the edge of forty-three, Betty Ann had picked up the bills before. She didn’t particularly mind any more. Her need was for young men and to indulge it she had found long since that the best bet was to haunt the poorer sections of the city—and to be quick and willing to press her own credit card to the payment screen.

  XX

  He spent the night at her apartment. Not that it did her much good. In spite of his youth, and what she had hoped would prove his prowess as a lover, it was as a deep sleeper that he turned out to be a veritable phenomenon. Betty Ann was disgusted.

  In the morning she fed him breakfast, sitting across the breakfast nook from him, taking no more than coffee for herself.

  In the light of day, without cosmetics, she was fully her age. Perhaps even a bit older in appearance than reality, for the past ten years had been hard ones, filled as they were with desperate attempt to halt the flight of youth in parties, in alcohol, in hard pursuit of Eros. It was all Billy could do to bring his eyes to her face, even as he wolfed a prodigious breakfast of six eggs, a full quart of milk, six or eight slices of bacon and as many of toast, with butter and marmalade.

  He had placed who she reminded him of, now that he saw her in morning’s unkindly light. Ruth Antrim. His mother after playing the late hour shows; tired and disheveled and caring nothing—except for him, of course.

  Betty Ann watched him wearily as he ate. “What did you plan on doing today?” she said finally. There was no girlish giggle in her voice now, only the weariness of a middle-aged woman who wouldn’t, who couldn’t, quite give up as yet.

  He looked up at her, quickly looked down again. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, slowly, “You’re a lot of fun.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said.

  “Sure you are. Why don’t we just hang around here today? It’s my day off. We’ll hang around and have a lot of laughs.”

  “And tonight you’d spend here again, eh?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “I’m afraid not, Billy.”

  His eyes were blue ice. “The name’s Jimmy.”

  “Kids named Jimmy don’t carry guns with the front sight filed away and the forepart of the trigger guard, so as not to get in the way of a quick draw.”

  His voice was as level and cold as his eyes. “You seem to know a lot about guns, lady.”

  She shrugged, wearily. “I read a lot and watch the Tri-D shows a lot. A single woman my age has got lots of time to watch the shows. I woke earlier than you and watched this morning for awhile. The drawing they show of you isn’t very good, but good enough, Billy Antrim.”

  He looked at her, poker-faced, but his mind was racing.

  She shook her head. “If you had to be worried about me telling them, I could have done it hours ago. All I had to do was pick up the phone while you were still asleep, after I had checked your clothes and found the gun. I suppose I should have…”

  “I don’t like that kinda talk, Betty Ann.”

  “… But I didn’t. I don’t know why. You’d better go now, though.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. He couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t called the police, either. She certainly wasn’t in love with him; he wasn’t the type to inspire love in a woman. Besides, she hadn’t had time to fall in love with him. And be in love with a seven-time killer on the lam? Not even a woman as desperate as Betty Ann.

  His best bet would be to add her to his list. She would have a better description of him than was evidently available thus far. She’d said the drawing they were showing over the air wasn’t so good. She’d be able to improve it for them.

  She chose that moment to reach for the coffee pot, wearily. He had seen Ruth Antrim in that exact pose a thousand times.

  A thousand times back in those days when there had been only the two of them. And when all the world had been only the two of them. When no one else had counted. Tired she might have been, exhausted from twice the number of shows a performer should have been expected to give—but never so tired that she couldn’t discuss the dream with him.

  The dream of their settling down somewhere and of Ruth finding some other manner of supporting them—it had never been quite clear what that might be, since she had known nothing else but show business. And he would go to school, and soon, very soon, such would be his efforts, he would be able to find a grand position of his own, and then Ruth Antrim would need work no longer. And then, indeed, the goal would have been reached. A home of their own, with Ruth to keep it and with Billy faring forth each morning to his labors, and she there to greet him at day’s end.

  He more or less knew it now for a boy’s dream and that of a tired woman in her early middle years. Deep within, he knew it had lacked reality. That at best there had been no room in it for his own marriage and eventual children. There had been no room in it for anything or anyone except Ruth and Billy Antrim. But still it was a dream that came back to him.

  Billy Antrim didn’t have many dreams.

  He shook his head and came to his feet.

  “Goodbye, Billy,” Betty Ann said after him.

  Ronny Bronston was saying into his portable communicator, “It was him, all right. The description tallied. He’s evidently got Gutenberg’s credit card, but is too smart to use it unless it’s an emergency. He went into a Sauna-Turkish Bath in Norfolk and spent nearly four hours there. Sleeping, of course. Then he told the attendant he’d forgotten his credit card and left a star sapphire ring as a pledge.”

  Sid Jakes interrupted him quickly: “You think he’ll go back to redeem it?”

  Ronny snorted. “Of course not. I think he’s cunning enough never to go back to where he’s been before. Besides, he’d be in the same position as before. The moment he used the credit card, to redeem his ring, we’d be onto him. At any rate, the Sauna-Turkish Bath attendant had second thoughts about the ring, wondering if it was stolen. It seemed too valuable to have been left in lieu of such a minor amount. He reported it, and the police relayed the story to me. They relay anything that involves somebody getting or trying to get something, or some service, without having a credit card.”

  “You don’t seem to be making much progress,” Jakes chuckled, as though that was amusing. “Ross is beginning to have second thoughts about assigning you to the job.”

  Ronny grunted. “At least I know I was right, before. He’s in the Norfolk area. And now, with his face all over town, he’ll be doubly hard put to hide himself. He’ll sh
ow. Within twenty-four hours I wager he’ll show. His luck can’t hold forever.”

  XXI

  However, it was holding thus far.

  Billy Antrim had to stay out of the light, and that was exactly what he was doing. In the cheapest part of the Norfolk section of Greater Washington, he was sitting, half sprawling, at a table in the darkest bar cum nightclub he could locate, the Pleasure Palace.

  Had he dared, he would have put his face in his arms, as though in drunken sleep, but he was afraid that the one caustic faced usher who supervised the automated alleged amusement center would have ordered him from the premises. As it was, he leaned his face on a cupped hand, so that the fingers could cover his prominent teeth, his chin and part of the nose, and pretended to watch the fairly spicy canned Tri-D show.

  He had to do something, and fast. As it was, the only thing he was accomplishing was to keep a few jumps ahead of the authorities. He knew it was only a few jumps by the inordinate number of police floaters on the streets. It had been nip and tuck a few times. They obviously knew he was in the Norfolk area. He had to do better than this, or it was just a matter of time before he slipped and they would have him.

  At the thought of it, he loosened the gun. He would at least go out with a bang. He twisted his mouth at the thought. He undoubtedly would, but what would be accomplished? What percentage was there in his being able to take two or three more of the fuzz-yokes with him—or even a hundred more?

  The usher was eyeing him.

  Billy had sat down at a table where there were a couple of glasses, one of them with an inch of dregs still in the bottom. He had pretended this glass was his own, but even had the usher been fooled on that—his eyes hadn’t been on Billy when he’d entered—he had evidently gotten around to noticing that his new customer wasn’t doing much in the way of drinking up and dialing anew.

  He had to do something, or leave. If the usher got around to coming to the table, he might recognize the Antrim features, even in this light.