4
Improvise.That was the word.
The gunslinger saw the blue-and-white parked down the block when he got out, and
read Police as Posse without checking Mort’s store of knowledge. Two gunslingers inside,
drinking something—coffee, maybe—from white paper glasses. Gunslingers, yes—but
they looked fat and lax.
He reached into Jack Mort’s wallet (except it was much too small to be a real wallet; a real wallet was almost as big as a purse and could carry all of a man’s things, if he wasn’t
travelling too heavy) and gave the driver a bill with the number 20 on it. The cabbie drove
away fast. It was easily the biggest tip he’d make that day, but the guy was so freaky he felt
he had earned every cent of it.
The gunslinger looked at the sign over the shop. CLEMENTS GUNS AND SPORTING
GOODS, it said. AMMO, FISHING TACKLE, OFFICIAL FACSIMILES.
He didn’t understand all of the words, but one look in the window was all it took for him to
see Mort had brought him to the right place. There were wristbands on display, badges of
rank . . . and guns. Rifles, mostly, but pistols as well. They were chained, but that didn’t
matter.
He would know what he needed when— if— he saw it. Roland consulted Jack Mort’s
mind—a mind exactly sly enough to suit his purposes—for more than a minute.
5
One of the cops in the blue-and-white elbowed the other. “Now that,” he said, “is a serious comparison shopper.”
His partner laughed. “Oh God,” he said in an effeminate voice as the man in the business suit and gold-rimmed glasses finished his study of the merchandise on display and went
inside. “I think he jutht dethided on the lavender hand- cuffths.”
The first cop choked on a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and sprayed it back into the
styrofoam cup in a gust of laughter.
6
A clerk came over almost at once and asked if he could be of help.
“I wonder,” the man in the conservative blue suit replied, “if you have a paper …” He paused, appeared to think deeply, and then looked up. “A chart, I mean, which shows
pictures of revolver ammunition.”
“You mean a caliber chart?” the clerk asked.
The customer paused, then said, “Yes. My brother has a revolver. I have fired it, but it’s
been a good many years. I think I will know the bullets if I see them.”
“Well, you may think so,” the clerk replied, “but it can be hard to tell. Was it a .22?
A .38? Ormaybe—”
“If you have a chart, I’ll know,” Roland said.
“Just a sec.” The clerk looked at the man in the blue suit doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged. Fuck, the customer was always right, even when he was wrong … if he had the
dough to pay, that was. Money talked, bullshit walked. “I got a Shooter’s Bible. Maybe that’s what you ought to look at.”
“Yes.” He smiled. Shooter’s Bible. It was a noble name for a book.
The man rummaged under the counter and brought out a well-thumbed volume as thick as
any book the gunslinger had ever seen in his life—and yet this man seemed to handle it as
if it were no more valuable than a handful of stones.
He opened it on the counter and turned it around. “Take a look. Although if it’s been years, you’re shootin’ in the dark.” He looked surprised, then smiled. “Pardon my pun.”
Roland didn’t hear. He was bent over the book, studying pictures which seemed almost as
real as the things they repres- ented, marvellous pictures the Mortcypedia identified
as Fottergraffs.
He turned the pages slowly. No … no … no …
He had almost lost hope when he saw it. He looked up at the clerk with such blazing
excitement that the clerk felt a little afraid.
“There!” he said. “There! Right there!”
The photograph he was tapping was one of a Winchester .45 pistol shell. It was not exactly
the same as his own shells, because it hadn’t been hand-thrown or hand-loaded, but he
could see without even consulting the figures (which would have meant almost nothing to
him anyway) that it would chamber and fire from his guns.
“Well, all right, I guess you found it,” the clerk said, “but don’t cream your jeans, fella. I mean, they’re just bullets.”
“You have them?”
“Sure. How many boxes do you want?”
“How many in a box?”
“Fifty.” The clerk began to look at the gunslinger with real suspicion. If the guy was
planning to buy shells, he must know he’d have to show a Permit to Carry photo-I.D. No
P.C., no ammo, not for handguns; it was the law in the borough of Manhattan. And if this
dude had a handgun permit, how come he didn’t know how many shells came in a standard
box of ammo?
“Fifty!” Now the guy was staring at him with slack-jawed surprise. He was off the wall, all right.
The clerk edged a bit to his left, a bit nearer the cash register. . . and, not so coincidentally, a bit nearer to his own gun, a .357 Mag which he kept fully loaded in a spring clip under the
counter.
“Fifty!”the gunslinger repeated. He had expected five, ten, perhaps as many as a dozen, but this . . . this . . .
How much money do you have?he asked the Mortcypedia. The Mortcypedia didn’t know,
not exactly, but thought there was at least sixty bux in his wallet.
“And how much does a box cost?” It would be more than sixty dollars, he supposed, but
the man might be persuaded to sell him part of a box, or—
“Seventeen-fifty,” the clerk said. “But, mister—”
Jack Mort was an accountant, and this time there was no waiting; translation and answer
came simultaneously.
“Three,” the gunslinger said. “Three boxes.” He tapped the Fotergraff of the shells with one finger. One hundred and fifty rounds! Ye gods! What a mad storehouse of riches this
world was!
The clerk wasn’t moving.
“You don’t have that many,” the gunslinger said. He felt no real surprise. It had been too good to be true. A dream.
“Oh, I got Winchester .45s I got .45s up the kazoo.” The clerk took another step to the left, a step closer to the cash register and the gun. If the guy was a nut, something the clerk
expected to find out for sure any second now, he was soon going to be a nut with an
extremely large hole in his midsection. “I got .45 ammo up the old ying-yang. What I want
to know, mister, is if you got the card.”
“Card?”
“A handgun permit with a photo. I can’t sell you hand- gun ammo unless you can show me
one. If you want to buy ammo without a P.C., you’re gonna hafta go up to Westchester.”
The gunslinger stared at the man blankly. This was all gabble to him. He understood none
of it. His Mortcypedia had some vague notion of what the man meant, but Mort’s ideas
were too vague to be trusted in this case. Mort had never owned a gun in his life. He did his
nasty work in other ways.
The man sidled another step to the left without taking his eyes from his customer’s face
and the gunslinger thought: He’s got a gun. He expects me to make trouble … or maybe he wants me to make trouble. Wants an excuse to shoot me.
Improvise.
He remembered the gunslingers sitting in their blue and white carriage down the street.
Gunslingers, yes, peace- keepers, men charged with keeping the world from moving on.
But these had looked—at least on a passing glance—to be nearly as soft and unobservant
as everyone else in this world of lotus-eaters; just two men in uniforms and caps, slouched
down in the seats of their carriage, drinking coffee. He might have misjudged. He hoped
for all their sakes—that he had not.
“Oh! I understand,” the gunslinger said, and drew an apologetic smile on Jack Mort’s face.
“I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t kept track of how much the world has moved on—
changed—since I last owned a gun.”
“No harm done,” the clerk said, relaxing minutely. Maybe the guy was all right. Or maybe he was pulling a gag.
“I wonder if I could look at that cleaning kit?” Roland pointed to a shelf behind the clerk.
“Sure.” The clerk turned to get it, and when he did, the gunslinger removed the wallet from Mort’s inside jacket pocket. He did this with the flickering speed of a fast draw. The clerk’s
back was to him for less than four seconds, but when he turned back to Mort, the wallet was
on the floor.
“It’s a beaut,” the clerk said, smiling, having decided the guy was okay after all. Hell, he knew how lousy you felt when you made a horse’s ass of yourself. He had done it in the